Paper 1 practice: ACTS Analysis style

The following is an analysis of an extract of the autobiography The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole (1857)

The text above is an excerpt from the autobiography The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole. This particular text shows all the elements of a memoir. It is anecdotal, is told in first person narrative, and has dialogue within the text. It aims to reminisce on past experiences and the dreadfulness of a deadly yellow fever plague. The text also serves as a warning aimed at the younger generation that may have not experienced such a calamity yet. Since it is written in an engaging manner and uses emotional language, it is easy for most people to engage with the topic; making the audience quite broad, as there is no need to be interested in the topic of history or medicine to actively engage with the text. The audience would be anyone who is willing to read the autobiography.

In the text, Seacole talks about the casualties she saw while nursing people at her home. She writes about her own personal experience and about how she was no longer affected by the gruesome and morbid scenes that she continuously saw in her daily life and about the scenes of grief that followed deaths actually made her suffer. However, she contrasts by talking about the experiences of others, talking about how different people would react in the face of death; about how the bravest men would “die trembling like children” while others who have barely suffered in their lifetimes would “die as heroes.” Through all of this she addresses the theme of death, which is a common happening in any deadly plague (such as the yellow fever), giving some examples of how people confront it and thus aiding the purpose of her warning. She also writes about a particular man that she had come to love as a son for a short period of time before he died, thus addressing the themes of motherly love and heavy loss. Through this anecdote, she is able to write on a much more intimate level with the audience and portray much stronger feelings of loss.

The text is written in a gloomy and bleak style, and effectively portrays the grim aspect of a deadly plague and her experiences with the yellow fever in a serious and emotional manner, helping her reminisce about her past as well as warn future generations of these threats. Even though the text has emotional anecdotes they are always related back to the over-arching theme of death by the plague, which keeps the atmosphere gloomy throughout the whole text. Right off the first sentence she uses words that evoke negative emotions (“suffering and gloom”), thus setting the mood right from the onset. The text, despite giving the impression of being quite cold because of the way Seacole explains she is used to seeing death and how it does not affect her much, is written in an emotional way that allows the tone to be friendly and welcoming and making it easy to engage with the text.

The text is written from the first person point of view, and gives the reader a much closer and engaging look into Seacole’s experience with the plague. Since it is a memoir, she gives her own perspective of the events, accompanied by the hindsight wisdom of experience that is characteristic of a memoir. She attempts to hook the reader by using emotional words and anecdotes that people can relate to. In the third  paragraph she uses repetition with the word trying and short sentences when she says “It was trying to see his poor hands trembling…trying to see how piteously the poor worn heart long to see once more...” which gives the text a quick, natural pace at that point that can easily engage readers. She also refrains from directly saying the names of the characters in her memoir in order to protect their remembrance. The text is structured with an introduction that aims to give some background information on her situation and the epidemic. Seacole then writes about the bravery in facing death in the second paragraph, which allows her to transition to the third and final paragraphs, which discuss her relationship with a man she nursed. The entire diction of the text reflects the time in which the text was written in, such as using the word “trying” instead of “daunting” which is a more commonly used word nowadays, or using the phrase “He sent for…” which is not quite commonly used anymore either.

Written Task 1 #1: Memoirs of a Dying Language

Rationale

In a world where globalization becomes more evident with each passing day, the disappearing of cultures that are overtaken by the bigger, more influential ones is a common issue, and along with that the disappearance of their languages. This is a serious issue, because language constitutes a very significant part of a people’s culture and once it is lost a crucial part of their culture and knowledge is lost forever. The Tlingit, a Native American tribe in Alaska, are one of the communities facing this issue currently, since their language is being overtaken by English.

I chose to write a memoir from the perspective of a hypothetical renowned Tlingit theater director who is living in modern-day New York and has been there for 20 years. The man has a strong passion for his ethnicity and his work in the world of theater has often been about cultural diversity and its importance. In the memoir he shares his experience growing up as a child and how his parents would sometimes discourage him from learning Tlingit in order to avoid discrimination. He also talks about how he decided to further learn the language on his own from the diaspora arisen from living in the city. Since he is a renowned director a memoir would be an appropriate way for him to communicate his thoughts, since this is a medium that involves a fair amount of creativity and people will want to read it because they know who he is, which makes it more relevant.

Memoir of a Dying Language

I remember my parents kept it a secret for a while. According to their stories I had heard them speak in Tlingit when I was a baby, but once they realized that I had begun speaking they decided to stop and only used English. When I was eight I remember imagining that I was some sort of chosen hero from a distant land, because I had these memories in my head of strange words. Words I had never heard anybody pronounce before and that left my friends baffled when they saw I could articulate such a different set of phonemes. I was really feeling like someday my fate would be revealed to me by some holographic crystal and that I would save the Earth as a fully-fledged superhero from a cool distant planet. Of course, that only lasted until I overheard my parents speaking in Tlingit one night while they thought I was asleep. Overcome by my naïve sense of adventure I walked forth into the kitchen and, completely oblivious to the horror faces my parents made, I asked: “Mom, dad, is there something that you’re keeping a secret from me?”

That was when I found out about it. I was disappointed that I wasn’t from some alien race that would be able to fly, but what I discovered that night shaped the course of my life forever. After they exchanged looks, my mom turned to me and said: “Son, there are so many things that we would like to tell you about, but we have never done so, because we do not want you to go through what we went.” At this point my eight-year-old mind is too drawn into the action to try to understand the depth of what my mother was saying. “Why don’t you sit down son?” Said my dad. “We have a few things we would like to tell you.”

That night, my parents taught me three things. Firstly, that we were direct descendants of the Tlingit tribe, but that the days of what I would imagine an Indian tribe doing were over. Secondly, that in order to be happy one must forget the Tlingit heritage and try to be like the other kids. And lastly, that yinaanáx means family and that that is what we are. My childish mind was dumbfounded by these teachings, to the point that when my mom told me to go to sleep right afterwards I did not have the mind to tell her I wanted to know more and I simply complied. The next day they did not let me ask the question, and somehow managed to get me to school without me knowing anything else. When I got to school and told my friends about what I had learned, one of them said that their dad had forbidden him to hang around Indian kids because they were dirty. At that moment he apologized and, along with his two best friends, he simply walked away. Now I understood what mom had told me about society. It would take a while before I understood why I should love my heritage.

From that point on my parents weren’t too shy about talking in Tlingit, but they would never speak to me in it. I was to learn proper English and how to fit in with the rest, so that one day I could go on and do great things. In my teenage years I was already able to grasp a few more words and my pronunciation was getting better with each day. Or at least that’s what it seemed like, since I didn’t have anyone to tell me whether it was alright or not. Sometimes my mom would help me, but that was a rare occasion. And by now I could understand why. It became evident once I began to socialize with more people that my Tlingit heritage was the bane of my life. And yet the desire to learn this language never disappeared. I wanted to understand where I was coming from, I wanted to feel unique for who I actually was and not what “society” wanted me to be like. Whenever I said a word in Tlingit it felt like I was entering a completely different universe. One that was filled with unlimited knowledge that had somehow been denied to me for so long.

After I graduated from High SchoolI had the opportunity to go live in the Big Apple, and that was when I realized that the bane of my life could easily become the most powerful boon: inspiration. I decided to go into the world of theater not just because I liked it, but also because it was a medium through which I could express in any way I wanted; including Tlingit. In this place, which is probably the most culturally diverse that there is, people praised me for these random nonsense that suddenly showed up in the middle of a monologue and when people asked me to be in their plays they would often want me to use Tlingit in it. I also discovered that I was not the only one who went through this story. Asian Americans, other Indians, Latin Americans, all of who grew up in the USA had to try to forget their heritage so that they could fit in. The same sad story repeated way too many times.

This was what gave me the inspiration to do what I do. In every culture, no matter how small or discriminated, there is a huge amount of knowledge that is hidden, and often the language is the easiest way to access it. With the internet, I have managed to become a fluent Tlingit speaker, embracing my culture more than ever before. And this is my life now, encouraging people to embrace their own cultures, whatever the cost may be. Because if a culture is lost, then it is gone forever. And that, is a loss to all of mankind.

The next stage of language: Textspeak?

The following are two different theories that explain how textspeak has shaped language in a new way.

David Crystal:

• Because telephones used to have a word limit per text message, people came up with ways to abbreviate what they were saying.
• People who text use consonants in unconventional ways, recognizing that they have a greater communicative value than most vowels, so they are likely to leave out more vowels than consonants. (E.g.: "b" to say be, "msg" to say message)
• Punctuation is often ignored and instead punctuation marks are used for other purposes, such as expressing emotions (E.g.: :D, :(, @__@, etc)
• Capital letters are ignored at the beginning of sentences and are instead used to express emotion and to emphasize on messages.
• Abbreviations and acronyms can be very vague and so they can sometimes en up communicating the wrong message (E.g.: an "lol" right after an affectionate message)
• There is more than one way to abbreviate things, which adds to the ambiguity (E.g.: TTYL, TTUL, TTUL8TR, T2UL, TTYL8TR, etc; which all mean "talk to you later").
• There is no universal convention to the way words are abbreviated in texts.
• Textspeak is unlikely to have an effect on a language as a whole.

John McWhorter

• Texspeak is more similar to speaking than it is to writing. People text how they speak, not how they write. This is why they tend to leave out things like capital letters and punctuation marks because you don't think about those when you speak.
• Pragmatic particles have appeared. These are words that don't really mean what they technically mean, but are more used to mark emotion and empathy. (E.g.: "lol gmail is being so slow" reply: "lol ikr") In the example the lol's aren't actually being used to say "laughing out loud" or "lots of love."
• "Information markers" have also appeared. For example the word "slash" being used to change the topic to make up for the fact that one can't use physical actions in a texting conversation.
• Texting has nothing to do with young people's language deficiency. This "language deficiency" has existed since ancient times.
• Bilingualism is good for the brain. So is "bidialectalism," and this applies to writing as well, and since textspeak can be considered as a different dialect, it is beneficial for the mind because that "balancing act" between common speech and textspeak is the same as speaking two different dialects.
• Language changes in extremely fast ways, to the point that a 20 year-old now would not be able to fully understand the text messages of 15 year-olds.
• Language will always be evolving.

Both theories agree that textspeak is not detrimental to language.

Crystal says that textspeak is unlikely to have an effect on language as a whole, while McWhorter says that language is always changing according to the conditions.

They both offer different views regarding how textspeak has changed the language. They both show different examples, but Crystal's are probably more outdated.

The Bluntness Hurts...

(The following is a letter that is meant to reply to an article regarding the topic of cultural appropriation. It's intended use is for educational purposes and I apologize if any feelings are hurt in the process. Please feel free to reply.)


This was the article chosen: http://thisisnotjapan.tumblr.com/post/67341539294/it-doesnt-make-sense-to-me-we-have-people-come-over.  It's not actually an article, but it's still closely related to the topic.


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To the administrators of thisisnotjapan,

I just recently read this, and with all honesty I have to say that it hurt like a kick in the stomach. The last few years of my life I've been into anime and the Japanese language has been something that has always come along with it, so sometimes between friends we would sometimes use random Japanese words. Since I've never actually had the opportunity to make friends with a Japanese person, I had never actually thought about how the use of the language like that could have been offensive. It's so stuck in my head that for a moment I was about to write "sorry" in Japanese. 

It's true that we often use the language the language because we think it's cool, or simply different and we want to identify ourselves with it, but it's not like we ever meant it in a bad way. You probably get this a lot, but we have absolutely nothing against your culture, and if anything we admire Japanese culture and kinda wish that we were more immersed in it. Said in that way, it sounds like we hate our own culture. But that's not the case. In this globalized world we live in it's become way too easy to get to know things about other cultures, and when something looks or sounds interesting we sometimes decide to try to incorporate it into our daily lives, that's just the truth of it. 

I'm not going to say that everyone who tries to incorporate other cultures into their lives are the same, but at least I tend to always strive to reference other cultures or languages in the appropriate way. Even though right now I do not have the opportunity to do so, I would like to learn Japanese in the future, so I think that using a few random words in my normal speech might actually help me get used to the language so that when I actually learn it it becomes easier. I am aware that even though the Japanese phonemes might be similar to Spanish there are certain aspects regarding the pitch of the voice that make it more complicated than it seems. 

I won't go into too many details because I'd probably make a lot of mistakes; but as I said before, I always strive to truly understand the significance of things in other cultures before I incorporate them in my daily life, so that I make sure that I'm not misusing anything. So to close up I'd like to leave you with a question: Do you think that if we try to fully understand another culture and then "appropriate" it (while respecting it), then it would still be considered a "negative" cultural appropriation?

Sincerely,

Carlos Páez