Baca Essay Coming Into Language

In the classes I teach to non-native Spanish speakers, students whose Spanish skills are unequal to their English ones oftentimes decline to participate in class, inhibited by insecurity. Although Jacob had privately confessed to me that he struggled with such insecurities as well, they never stopped him from regularly discussing with his classmates topics as linguistically demanding as poetry analysis, U.S. foreign policy, and gender theory. Nor did they prevent me and the class from getting to know Jacob's intellectual sophistication, sense of humor, tact, and likeability, which are personality traits very dependent on nuance and which more often than not withdraw when the possessor must communicate extemporaneously in a second language.

In the course of reading two separate texts it is generally possible to connect the two readings even if they do not necessarily seem to be trying to convey the same message. The two articles, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, and “Coming Into Language” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, do have some very notable similarities. They are two articles from a section in a compilation about the construction of language. The fact that these two articles were put into this section makes it obvious that they will have some sort of connection. This essay will first summarize the two articles and break them down so that they are easily comparable; also, this essay will compare the two

On the other hand the “public” language was the language that he felt threatened by. He says that he can only hear sounds people make while speaking English instead of the actual words. He remembers that those words sounded like ,"So many words were still unknown to me that when the butcher or the lady at the drugstore said something, exotic polysyllabic sounds would bloom in the midst of their sentences. Often speech in public seemed to me very loud, booming with confidence"(449) . To him whenever someone spoke English it was a complete blur .It was like he was living in a different world different to what he was used to. It wasn't until he realised that everyone around him aside from his family spoke the English language .Once he started learning English, he slowly began to realize that he needed to learn it in order to fit in society. Receiving bilingual education taught him that it was a must to learn both Spanish language and English language in order fit into the American society. And with that came the losse of his closeness to his family.

In "Coming Into Language," Jimmy Santiago Baca describes how he went from being illiterate to learning how to read and write and eventually becoming a poet while being in prison. From being embarrassed for not understanding and asking questions Baca become illiterate, and in ninth grade he decided to drop out. The only thing that seemed to interest him was books with pictures of people of the same nationality as him. When listening to prisoners talk in “ Chicano language” out loud it had inspired him to learn his own language. In this narrative Baca explains to us that becoming a writer helped him through tough years when he was an inmate.

On the one hand, English was the language used to communicate with outsiders. It was a tool for survival and held no personal meaning. It was crucial for public success. On the other hand, in Richard Rodriguez’s own words: “Spanish was associated with closeness”. By reading the previous passage, we can clearly infer that Spanish was the key to Richard’s confort. Hearing Spanish brought Rodriguez feelings of love, acceptance, family, and security. Spanish was a reminder of home and seemed to him a private language. In other words, he was surrounded by a web built by the family love and security which is conveyed by using the Spanish language, as the following passage shows: “...Spanish seemed to me the language of home...It became the language of joyful return...”. Moreover, if we consider the following passage:”You belong here. We are family members. Related. Special to one another” it is possible to say that Spanish language made Rodriguez felt as part of his family, creating a feeling of belonging and reinforcing family ties and ethnic heritage.

This essay, titled “Aria”, originally published in 2008, is an autobiographic essay of the author’s childhood, Richard Rodriguez’. In his essay, Richard is against bilingual educators, who think that children in their first years of school should be educated in their native language. According to him this education system is wrong, won’t be beneficial, therefore children should be educated in the same language as the public one.

By contrast, Richard Rodriquez, in his article entitled "Aria", strongly believes in surrendering to learning the proper English language, despite how strongly he feels his native tongue is a private language that once functioned to unite his family. Rodriguez creates a division of a public and a private discourse. He feels that he has a ‘right to learn the public language of los gringos'. He creates a visual clash of two worlds: a public world as represented by school and the need to learn English; and a private world as represented by his family and the use of Spanish within the home. He feels that in order to adapt and create assimilation that he needs to abandon the comfort of using Spanish to communicate and force himself to learn English – even if it meant alienating his family members.

There are both positive and negative aspects of learning a language, but people are likely to equalize two sides and try not to lose the relationships with their family and the society. Amy Tan, in “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez in “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” explain how they viewed their private and public languages through their experiences and how they managed these two languages and established themselves in the society. Tan initially felt ashamed of her private language and favored the public language; however, in the end she showed that she could manage the balance between the languages and finally utilized both in public. On the other hand, Rodriguez preferred his private language which made him feel comfortable;

The rhetorical situation of Gloria Anzaldua’s, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” from her book Borderlands/La Frontera, is the most important piece to her argument. A writer’s rhetorical situation is the use of the elements of the rhetor, audience, text, medium, context and exigence. Through the correct use of these pieces, a writer is able to greatly strengthen their argument and persuasive abilities. In her passage, Gloria Anzaldua is speaking to the unfair and unjust treatment of Spanish speaking children growing up in the United States educational system. These are not just kids who have moved here from a Spanish speaking country, but even those born in the United States that grew up speaking Spanish because of their family’s culture. Through her writing she wants to bring this into light to induce change and help children of the future be able to learn in an environment where they are also able to comfortable speak their own language. She is not looking for them to be able to speak their own language in an American school just because she wants to be difficult. In her eyes, your language is part of your identity of self. And without your language, you are also losing part of yourself. Again, she expresses and increases the persuasiveness of these ideas through the use of her rhetorical situation, which includes the rhetor, audience, text, medium, context and exigence.

“COMING INTO LANGUAGE” by Jimmy Santiago Baca portrays how literacy can bring light into life and forever changed a person’s world. Baca, a ninth-grade dropout, before his 18th birthday Baca was arrested for refusing to explain the wound on his forearm. This unfortunate event exposed how powerless he was. In prison, the reading of the prisoners enlightens Baca. The words of different writers influenced his original thought toward reading. Two years later, as Baca was arrested again, he fell deeper into the art of language and the art of reading and writing. Throughout “Coming into Language”, Baca used many rhetorical strategies such as, metaphor, Imagery, description, asyndeton, and dictions that appeal to emotions to persuade readers of the effect of literacy toward a person’s life.

“Her language, as I hear it, vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world” (7). The author talked about her personal experiences with the different kinds of English. She talked about how her

This dehumanization can be felt within many global communities today and continues to destroy the well-being of many individuals. Whether this freedom of speech is denied due to poverty or overbearing authority, it provokes a widespread sense of insecurity and vulnerability. This emotional instability is expressed in the autobiography “Coming into Language,” where Jimmy Santiago Baca reveals the hardships of his poverty-stricken childhood. Growing up in an orphanage and later living on the streets, Baca did not have access to a viable education or support system, and eventually dropped out of school. This abandonment of education was due to educators focusing on Baca’s deficiencies opposed to his potential, and creating an environment where

Learning a new language seems to have only positive effects. However, for a Mexican American, accomplishing this goal brought him drawbacks in the interaction with his family. In his essay, ‘’Public and Private language,’’ Richard Rodriguez describes the difficulty in learning a new language and the sacrifice he makes to accomplish his goal. Richard Rodriguez shares the difficulty for older people, as they learn a new language; however, for younger generations is easier to learn a new language. Also, the new language creates a lack of communication for Richard Rodriguez.

To constitute what a language is, four levels of language structure have been established. Specifically, these levels of analysis include phenomes, words, sentences and texts.  According to the Willingham (2007) text, phenomes are a small unit of sound which make up a word.  A potential problem is if these words are mispronounced.  For example, slang changes from one area to another.  When a person is thrown a new word, it throws them off on the rest of the topic.  If I say "I'm fixin to go downtown," some may only know "fixin" as literally fixing something and not preparing or getting ready as "fixin" means in this context.  This non familiar use of a word may be confusing to oneself, but to the person saying the word, “fixin” is a lexicon built into a vocabulary.  Accents of foreigners may be another potential barrier.  By mishearing these phenomes and not understanding language due to this deficit, obtaining meaningful language is difficult.  Words themselves, and specifically the separation of words, may be another potential barrier to language

As person living with the gift of dual language, Tan’s essay allowed some insight into my own life. She argued that a person’s limitation on language does not reflect their perspective on society or events of the world. The limitation is more of a token than a deficiency, people having these language issues must come up with an exclusive way to portray thoughts and ideas; therefore, enhancing their perceptual knowledge of the world around. Growing up listening to my mother’s English, I have learned to adapt and am able to fully understand her, even though I constantly catch myself trying to correct her. The way she conveys her thoughts and ideas is what makes her unique and who am I to change her by correcting her idiosyncrasies. Although I have become accustomed to my mother’s English there are certain things she says that even