TEXT 1 ANALYSIS

Audience and Purpose:Text 1

Text #1 is memoir extracted from the autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole. It follows all conventions of memoirs, namely direct narration, hindsight wisdom, dialogue and anecdotes. Direct narration is evident through the repeated use of ‘I´ throughout the extract, as well as from the content being a direct recounting of her history. The author also provides multiple instances of hindsight wisdom in her observations on death and life, saying that, ”Death is always terrible – no one need be ashamed to fear it.” Similarly, she reflects on her relationship with the surgeon in, “I think he had some fondness for me… I used to…weep over him in a very weak and silly manner perhaps.”  Notable characters are also given their own voice, in “Let my lay my head upon your breast.” Finally, it was anecdotal as she recounted a specific event from her past – her falling in love with the surgeon. The aim of the piece was to recount her experiences, and to retell her emotions on them. At the publishing time of the piece, it was likely the audience were the English. This is shown in the sympathy she expresses with them, in “the mother country pays a dear price for the possession of her colonies,” and in the older styled diction. The audience may also be people who have experienced the deaths of loved ones, as it offers support for them and suggestions on dealing with it.

In this memoir, the author is able to retell her experience in Jamaica in the year 1853 and express through writing, all the emotions she had during that time period. She then goes on to reflect on her time there and her experiences. She talks a lot about deaths and its sufferings and because she was a nurse, it was much harder on her. This could relate to people going through similar times with a loved one, so it provides the readers with an insight. The author retells a very personal and intimate anecdote of her relation with a surgeon. This makes it more of a memoir because the author is able to engage with her audience and to portray her insights on their personal thoughts and views. The author has also gained wisdom through her experience with death and realized: “Death is always terrible- no one needs to be ashamed of it” and “for before that time, if I had not learnt to meet him with a brave, smiling face, and this he taught me.”

The mood of the memoir is friendly and quite personal/ private. The author uses this memoir to reflect on her time in Jamaica. One of the main themes is death, which adds a bit of a depressive atmosphere yet gradually brightens the mood by retelling the story of her and the surgeon, relating the theme to love instead of death and says: “I do not willingly care to dwell upon scenes of suffering and death.” She continuously towards the end focuses on the positive things of the surgeon and how he made her feel instead of talking about his death: “his kind heart feigned a feeling that he saw would give me joy; for I used to call him “My son- my dear child”, and to week over him in a very weak and silly manner perhaps.”

It is written in a form of a memoir so throughout the whole extract there is a repetition of ‘I’ which is an example of direct narration which reflects her feelings and personal experiences. Through using a memoir, many anecdotes can be told that which shows a person’s wisdom evolving creating inspiration for other people, here we see how she gains wisdom of death: “Death is always terrible- no one should be ashamed to fear it.” The uniqueness of the piece gets the readers sort of engaged yet due to her more old structure and older dialect; many readers might find themselves not able to identify with such a piece. She also structures her sentences to be very long, sometimes five continuous lines. She relates herself with England and refers to it as “the mother country” which hints where this style of writing emerged from. Due to her relation with England, the author’s views and opinion are limited and it would be bias because it would affect how she viewed incidents and occurrences around her relation with the surgeon.
Throughout the extract, pronouns are used.

Rationale and Memoir

Rationale
Written Task One

I’ve chosen to produce a memoir because it is a text type that is able to portray the individual’s insights on their personal thoughts and views. Through using a memoir, many anecdotes can be told that which shows a person’s wisdom evolving creating inspiration for other people. The response will be written in the perspective of Paul Dunbar, the poet who wrote Little Brown Baby because he will best be able to convey the meaning and express the feelings that were go along with the piece of writing. The target audience is everyone especially because it is a memoir, therefore everyone you should be able to read it and have an opinion. The purpose of this response is to show and prove to people that just because AAVE isn’t classified as Standard English, doesn’t make it any less degrading or for it to be considered as broken English or wrong and that in fact a lot of times it is understood and used for people to express themselves in their own ways and it is a part of peoples cultures and identity. There is a lot of historical context to AAVE and how it has developed through the years and how it is used with certain people at certain times. There is definitely a social setting, it is used to socialize between African Americans most of the times but recently other cultures have started using it but there is an extent to were no other culture can interfere because it is their language of intimacy between their culture. 

Memoir

AAVE… The first thing that comes to mind is our ownership. It’s a dialect that we own, we use and we understand. It is our dialect of intimacy. AAVE, also known as Black English Vernacular is mainly spoken in the United Sates and the Caribbean. AAVE has developed through the years with speakers of West Africa who learnt English on plantations in the southern coastal states such as Georgia or South Carolina. All our ancestors have been speaking this way and it has been passed down for generations now, it is understood between us.

Many people and scholars would argue that it is not an acceptable form of speaking and communicating because it is “broken” or “wrong” and less valuable and degrading to society because it degrades the English language and those who speak it are of less standards and do not really wish to educate themselves on a higher level. Some people also argue that in certain situations, speaking in AAVE is inappropriate and can sometimes let a person achieve less than they should. For instance, if a person was to apply for a job and went to an interview and spoke in AAVE to the manager, they would less likely be able to receive this job because the way they speak portrays a less understanding and devalued manner yet why should we be judged based on who we are? We don’t intentionally put on that dialect; it is a part of who we are a part of our master identity. Why should we have to change ourselves to be accepted or classified as “smart”? Many people don’t realise what an important role AAVE plays in our lives.

In my poem Little Brown Baby, I wrote the whole poem in AAVE, all of it. My use of AAVE in the poem creates the effect of speech patterns. In the poem, the father of the baby is the speaker, he came back from work and looks at his baby and is concerned of his sons future when he says: “Wisht you could allus know ease an’ cleah skies;/Wisht you could stay jes’ a chile on my breas’--/Little brown baby wif spa’klin’ eyes!”
When writing this poem I tried to establish the joys of life, the baby’s father holds him and enjoys his son’s innocence. The son has sparkling eyes and a smile that’ll never leave his face.
So, Little Brown Baby conveys the importance of family, love, joy and humour and the heart wounds that occur in the life of the speaker but not only him but also the whole race of the African Americans. This poem was best written in AAVE because it best described the situation and best expresses the feelings and emotions that we have in our lives, it is not only a speech but a dialect of intimacy, a dialect understood within our culture and who we are.

I dislike how others thought of black people’s dialect, as if black people were limited to a compelled form of expression that was unassociated with the more educated class. When once asked at an interview how I felt about all this, I replied: "I am tired, so tired of dialect, my natural speech is dialect and my love is for the Negro pieces"
Back in school I was the only coloured kid there was but that wasn’t what stood out the most, it was my scholarly performance. I did very well and became the resident of the school Newspaper but later as I wanted to pursue these dreams of mine I couldn’t due to the black discrimination that was going on. Instead I became an elevator operator but much later was discovered for my true talents yet I started writing to suit society and in a way that didn’t please me much and much later did I realise that I will write in AAVE because that is my dialect of my people and it is a part of who I am which took a long while because living in that society made you feel like you were less of value and not capable of accomplishing much if you spoke or wrote in AAVE.  

The article “Ain’t No Reason” and the video “African-American English” both agree with important use of AAVE in our community. Just because AAVE doesn’t follow the traditional American English rules of grammar doesn’t mean it’s wrong, instead it has its own rules.  In the articles on “Ain’t No Reason” the author explains how we enforce our own grammatical rules such as using double negatives such as: “I ain’t got none” or “I ain’t singin’ nothing” or “I ain’t never eat no sushi” yet the interesting part is if you translated these sentences into French you’d have: “Je n’en ai pas” or “Je ne chnaterai pas” or “Je n’ai jamais mange de sushis” you can clearly see that French has the same structure as AAVE in using the double negatives, does that make French wrong? AAVE follows its own strict grammatical rules.
AAVE is spoken by younger people because they’ve brought up like that because that’s what they know, it isn’t wrong- it’s their language.

In the video “African- American English” it discusses the importance of language and how the music and poetry of the language creates a bond of love. People talk like they talk; they talk like who they are because they are who they are. The use of language is a way to continue to communicate ideas and especially emotions. We use AAVE to keep connection with group and to make sure we don’t lose them or our connection with them. AAVE is a part of life and a sense of family and familiarity and it determines lines. Every generation has to identify itself and create own language. We develop AAVE, like language to keep communicating and keep ideas going and most importantly because it is a language/ dialect of intimacy it is most certainly used to express our emotions in our own manners.

LANGUAGE AND TECHNOLOGY 

John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!


TEXTING IS A MIRACULOUS THING. John Whorter looks at the meaning behind language in various ways. He says language has been used mostly in speech. We write like we speak. The thing about texting is that it's loose on its structure, so there's no focus on punctuation and grammar. It's basically the idea of fingered speech in which we write the way we talk and it is easy to think of it as a decline to language due to its bagginess and concern to the lack of traditional blackboard ways of teaching and writing. People think something has gone wrong but actually texting is a kind of emergent complexity. It is not writing at all in fact it has a new structure, the  words become subtler and words start to become markers of empathy, marker of accommodation which linguistics call pragmatic particles. Texting has introduced a new information marker. There's new constructions developing due to texting, a whole new way of life, young people are developing, alongside using their own writing skills meaning they can use two things which increases the dialectical which is cognitively beneficial in terms of writing so actually texting is a balancing act and therefore is an expansion of their linguistic repertoire.


David Crystal: Texting

David Crystal does not believe that texting decreases literacy rates of young adults. Crystal discusses the use of abbreviation and acronyms and how they motivate a much wider ranging and innovative set of conventions. Therefore texting has its own different ways of direct address items.  Texting is beneficial to literacy.


Both of the men agree that technology actually develops a new certain type of dialect used between the young adults to communicate. Although both point out how badly this is seen around the world and that actually technology doesn't improve or support language, they argue reasonable points on how its a new profound structure of writing.

Although they both support it, they focus at it in different ways and forms. For instance, Crystal says that in order to leave out a letter you need to know its there. Which helps you get better and practice on it. Where as John approaches it in another matter. He looks through history showing evidence of how bad language was back then and texting wasn't even introduced back then. Which shows that texting isn't exactly a main reason for bad language, grammar and punctuation. He believes the it is beneficial to them and develops their language making them bidialectical.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION 

Dear Ms. Pettet, 

Since when do fashionistas serve the right to decide whether a religious symbol can be passed as a fashion statement?

The turban has a lot of historical context and has been around for over thousands of years. different religions wear different colours according to their beliefs and culture. For instance in Islam, Prophet Mohammed used to wear a white turban which is a holy color. In Sikhism the main reasons to wear turban are to take care of the hair, promote equality, and preserve the Sikh identity. The people of the Sikh religion do not cut their hair as a religious observance so therefore the turban protects the hair and keeps it clean. Sikhs only form 2% of India’s population, their turbans help identify them. So the Sikhs rely on their turban for their master identity. When he institutionalized the turban as a part of the Sikh identity, Guru Gobind Singh said, "My Sikh will be recognized among millions."

I don't think its right for you and other fashionistas to portray your "fashion ideas" through other peoples cultures and beliefs. By using the turban as a fashion icon, you gradually start degrading it and the significance of the turban starts to vanish. As I have already stated, Sikhs make up only 2% of India's population which represent their identity by wearing the turban so you're slowly decreasing their identity to the community and other cultures. 

Yet although you might not think that you're insulting them or treating them unjustly, many religious or cultural people would take to offense how you're making an important symbol in their culture disappear for your own gain and fashion fame.  

"...after a two-season slump, the intricately bold turban designs at the Marc by Marc Jacobs show for Spring/Summer 2013 proved the fashion trend is, yet again, the hottest, statement-worthy accessory to try."

"Whether it's a traditional headwrap style or a detailed headband, the turban is this season's perfect show-stopping way to top of your look."

You say those statements, ignorant to the fact that these turbans generate from a long timed culture and religions and actually have a meaning and significance to people. This is disrespectful in many different cases. Many people don't know about the origin of the turban so they'll believe that it actually originates as a fashion icon and doesn't have any significance or history, making it even less valuable as a cultural item. In my opinion this should not be a frequent thing and many Sikhs are not happy with how their icon is being played with as ignored as what it really stands for. This should be respected and treated carefully because it is offensive to many. 

I would much appreciate it if you could consider changing the way you view this and at least give a bit of context regarding the turban.

Many thanks, 

Ghadeer Salih