Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Louise Pratt Essay

In 1990, the second Modern Language Association Literacy Conference was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the conference Mary Louise Pratt a Stanford Professor delivered a keynote/lecture that revolutionized how people think about their social spaces. She introduced a revolutionary way to think about these social spaces, instead of calling them communities she started calling it the “contact zone”. According to Pratt a “contact zone is a place where cultures meet, clash, and grapple” (Pratt 487). While lecturing her fellow colleagues Pratt argues that our idea of community is strongly utopian. She continues to plead her case by saying that societies often profess, “embodying values like equality fraternity and liberty, but

After talking to students in classroom who were assigned to do a project on Pratt, getting a frequent response “I didn’t read it, it’s too hard to comprehend” was an ordinary thing. Therefore, writing a response to Pratt’s essay in a language that is comprehendible by regular people can be very helpful to those struggling students. In "Arts of the Contact Zone" Pratt discusses the mix of two different cultures in one area. Where one person is born and lives in a "contact zone" he/she is surrounded by two different conflicting cultures, and there are two different languages. She also introduces us with a new word "autoethnography", which means the way in which subordinate peoples present themselves in ways that their

Writing is a powerful tool for communication and connection. As an extension and expression of the mind, writing is as much about the mental processes of the author as it is about the final marks laid to paper. As we write, we hold in mind our own thoughts on the work, anticipate the reader’s thoughts, and think both in concrete and abstract ways in order to accomplish the task at hand. Whether an academic research paper, a novel, or text message to friends, writing seeks to engage, persuade, or impress concepts upon an audience. Like language and other art forms in general, the practice of writing is ever-evolving and is subject to cultural and contextual influence, expectations, and conventions. Each writer holds a theory

Mary Louise Pratt wrote the essay “Arts of the Contact Zone” with the purpose of explaining that society would benefit if people were exposed to and understood the concept of “contact zones”. She refers to contact zones as social spaces where cultures meet and clash with each other, usually with one culture being dominant over the other. A person living in a contact zone is exposed to two different cultures, two different languages, and as a result is presented with a struggle in each culture to maintain themselves. From being surrounded by several different cultures, people begin to integrate the concept of transculturation—a process in which subordinate cultures evolve by taking things from dominant, more advanced cultures, and make it

Mary Louise Pratt defined contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today.” A contact zone is a place where two cultures can mesh together. People from different cultures are able to interact with each other through these contact zones. A contact zone allows people to look into cultures other than their own. They can get new ideas by looking into another culture, as well as their own. Contact zones allow you to look at things in a new way. Pratt talks about contact zones being seen more and more today. People may have to look beyond how

In "Learning to Read and Write" by Fredrick Douglass, "The Good Immigrant Student" by Bich Minh Nguyen and "The Joy of Reading and Writing" by Sherman Alexie, each author narrates their experiences in acquiring literary skills. A common factor for all of them is that they all experienced significant difficulties in becoming proficient in academics . Through a variety of rhetoric strategies, the authors articulate their utmost concerns where they present strong evidence on the difficulties experienced by minority communities in their quest for education. Therefore, this paper asserts that the role of reading, writing, and language relates to racial discrimination, cultural difference, and freedom which is of much relevance to today’s

In the civilized society that everyone lives in today, all languages and culture should be equal. That is the main idea in both Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, as well as James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”. The authors in both these texts support their argument in various ways, and in doing so, manages to effectively persuade their audience. The ways that each author approaches their argument is different in their appeals, evidence, and styles. Similarities also exist between the texts of the two authors. The rhetorical strategies that Anzaldua uses makes her argument much stronger than Baldwin’s argument.

There are many people in this world today that are being judged for their skin color, how they talk, where they came from, how they walk and their ethnic background. People like this are looked down on by society for just being themselves. Language, Gender and Culture can relate to power because men have more power than women by the way they speak, their income and their education. When it comes to language, gender and culture there is a lot of racial profiling that occurs.

Minority students in the United States are never welcomed in the education system as the whites. Language and understanding of ones culture, values and opinions is something that students vs students and teachers vs students and parent have not been as amiable. For a student to truly succeed in an academic setting the student must feel comfortable and feel supported in a neutral environment where they feel treated equally like their fellow peers. Having a more diverse administration, teachers and students will benefit all of these parties for the better. In a country filled with various races, cultures, and values it is important fort students to know how to communicate from different people which will prepare them for

In this article, Bartholomae talks about writers and how they need “invent the university” by imitating the particular language their readers use. He makes strong points on how and why writers need to do this. You must do it by connecting your own point of few to the view of your audience, who is reading your work.

The “Arts of the Contact Zone”, an article written by Stanford professor Mary Louise Pratt, discusses many different ideas about culture and communication by utilizing what she calls the literate arts. Pratt explains many terms that she believes are beneficial in gaining a further understanding of a literary piece. Key terms such as, contact zone, autoethnography and transculturation are introduced in her essay. She describes contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”(Pratt 487). The contact zone can be summarized as a space where two groups with different beliefs or ideas intermingle. In the essay, Pratt also describes the literate arts that come out of the contact zone. Literary arts are ways of addressing problems in the contact zone and sometimes make an attempt to resolve the issue that is happening or has happened. Two terms heavily discussed in the essay are autoethnography and transculturation. These are only two of the many literate arts that precipitate out of the contact zone. Pratt defines autoethnography as a “text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them”(Pratt 487). The culture often takes on those stereotypes in some form of literary work and presents it to the dominant culture often trying to change their views or perspectives. Autoethnography is often used as an effective method

“The Contact Zone”, is defined by Mary Louis Pratt as “the space in which transculturation takes place – where two different cultures meet and inform each other, often in highly asymmetrical ways.” Pratt describes what she calls ‘contact zones’ and elaborates on the pros and cons of these cultural interactions. She sees the contact zone as a place that allows people to exchange cultural ideas and break down the dividing cultural borders. When a contact zone is started, people are able to interact on new levels gaining a new perspective because they are able to collaborate with people from foreign cultures. If you are always with people of the same culture as you, you become used to hearing everything from the same perspective. With a

In-school writing perpetuates the pattern of privilege. The reason being is that the students who are supposed to be reading the documents cannot relate to it whenever they are from an area where privileged culture is not prevalent. Students from urban areas and inner-cities that are African American teenagers would probably be able to relate to articles by authors of African decent that have gone through and experienced things similar to that of the youths. They want stuff that they are interested in and that goes on in their communities. For example, a student from the inner-city would much rather write a poem about a social situation that they recently experienced rather than writing an essay on how Shakespeare influenced the European drama

As stated above, my group was comprised of people from different ethnic backgrounds, each with his/her own ideologies and perspectives. The challenge here was limited communication due to language barriers. English is used as the main language for communicating across almost all forums, including classrooms. Regardless of this, it became more difficult for us to communicate effectively simply because some of the members had a hard time deciphering what we were conversing about. It could have been that some of the requirements for presentation were confusing or some of the English phrases and terminologies were not conversant with them. However, we devised a mechanism where we integrated the

Below are some possible problem areas that may turn out to to be barriers to