Speech Sound Octavia Butler

Dr. Alice Howland is a thoroughly modern, middle-aged professional woman. A brilliant, psycholinguist, she is the William James Professor of Psychology at Harvard University where she studies the mechanism of languages. But she feels as if something isn 't right. For Alice it begins with forgotten words during lectures, a moment in Harvard Square where she has no idea where she is nor how to get home, a forgotten trip to the airport to catch a plane to a conference she 'd spent the day preparing for, and names on to-do lists that mean nothing to her.

As statistics show, science fiction has long been a genre produced and consumed by nerdy, middle aged, white men, with little to no social skills. The content of science fiction has typically revolved around intergalactic interaction and male dominated adventure and exploration, most certainly do not imagine that science fiction can be used to write about feminist thoughts or ideas. However, this is exactly what Octavia Butler does in her short story “Speech Sounds.” Many scholars believe that feminist science fiction writers write toward a utopian society. Butler, however, tends to write more towards a confrontation with dystopia. A dystopian society, or anti-utopia, is a society

“The Sound of a Voice” by David Henry Hwang is a one act play telling the story of two characters, Man and Woman. These characters both live alone and isolated. Woman is rumored to be a witch, and Man is a soldier without a purpose who comes in hope of killing Woman. They both have a fear of silence and love. These unusual fears result in their fatal downfall. This play explores deep emotions, such as the fear of silence that Man and Woman share which pushes Woman to commit suicide. A fear of intimacy, felt exceptionally strong by Man, results in unfortunate timing leading to Woman’s death. Loneliness displayed by both characters is the underlying cause of the outcome. These feelings play together to contribute to Man and Woman’s tragic love.

Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again book gives a detailed account of his experience with becoming deaf in both a hearing and deaf world. It includes the awkwardness and un-comfortability he felt in hearing environments, within is personal family dynamic and in deaf safe havens where he learned to adjust, and grow for the betterment of him learning ASL and in general, becoming emerged within Deaf culture. Drolsbaugh starts the book off by introducing how life for deaf people, even when giving birth, can be a struggle (due to society not being well informed on how to effectively communicate and treat Deaf individuals). Drolsbaugh’s mother, Sherry, wasn’t properly given epidural while giving birth to him, and as she made noises to best express that something was wrong, the nurse brushed it off. Once Mark was born, and Sherry got up the needle wasn’t in her back but on the bed. Looking at how communication issues can lead to negative results, throughout the rest of the book Drolsbaugh sheds light on this phenomenon, specifically focusing on the educational environment and the interactions between and among hearing and deaf communities.

In learning about the deaf culture I have taken on a new understanding about the people it includes. Through readings and the lessons, I have learned that being deaf has both its hardships and its blessings. The beauty of the language alone makes one want to learn all that he or she can about it. In this paper I will discuss the beauty of the language and the misconceptions the hearing world has about deafness.

“Speech Sounds” is a short story written by Octavia Butler that follows the adventures of Rye in a dystopian world where a mysterious pandemic severely limits humankind’s ability to communicate. Written in the time period of the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, Rye as a female in a dystopian story is unusual and against the normal conventions for this genre of stories. So now Rye, a woman with the ability to speak, becomes the dominant female character throughout the story. This breakthrough fight against the norms allows Butler to take steps forward in feminist culture through the power of Rye’s character. Through Rye’s actions and dialogue, it is seen that she does not stand for man???????

When I was reading The Transformation of silence into Language and action by Audre Lorde, remember me that day at work about my strong acensent. The article of Audre Lorden at the end have the big reflection that let broke the silence will be better to became a strong person and know that my voice have to be lisent because it is important. For me is important to speak so I can be hear by the customer and get better in my inglish. For the woman was important to broke the silence so she can be out of their painful of be silence. Also in my experience of racism at work reflect the philosophy by Judith Butler and is where I find what I really think about language, and culture. I was like I don't want to know how far cruelty and ignorance

The short story “Speech Sounds” is a science fiction story written by Octavia Butler. This essay portrays a central theme that really opened my eyes as well as many others. This theme is to never take your ability to communicate for granted. Communication is a huge part of our culture and civilization. I never truly realized how important communication really was until reading this story. Without it, we cannot express our feelings in a correct manner. Not being able to connect with other individuals results in it being very hard to cooperate with others, causing chaos amongst society. In a short amount of time, the world would turn on each other causing mass amounts of violence. Likewise, this is similar to the story “Speech Sounds.” There are many takeaways one can have after reading this story.

There had been enough time for something to change but almost everything was the exact same. Again Rye found herself travelling on a bus to go search for something, now knowing her brother is in fact dead she wasn 't exactly sure if what she was searching for was real. The only difference was that she now had the weight of two pre-teens. She felt it best for them to be as cautious as she had been while travelling around a decade ago. Each child had their own piece to communicate what their name was without using their words, it’s safer. Sitting on these benches Rye looked at them, the girl was the spitting image of her dead mother long curly dirty blond hair, a button nose, freckles, green eyes, and the perfect height for her age. Her was brother only slightly taller, with a darker skinned tone, and features almost exactly the opposite of his sister. The only feature similar was their hair texture. Rye would never admit this to anyone but there were times like the present that she regrets the events leading up to this very moment. The deja vu of running away except this time with hope.

The poem Suicide Note, written by Janice Mirikitani (1987), talks about a young lady, who has studied in an Asian-American female college. The lady, unfortunately, committed suicide by jumping through her dormitory’s window. She left behind a note, citing reasons that led to her actions. After a critical analysis of the note, her parents were held responsible for her actions; they were pressurizing her to perform better in her exams. The poem, thus, describes the real feelings and the emotions of this young lady, who believes that committing suicide is the only option left to please her parents and to escape the enormous pressure placed on her. The persona uses voice in the poem to bring our attention to the sufferings she was going through, and that led to the devastating event. Voice in poetry is the strong words of a line, stanza or a page that creates a relationship between the audience and the persona. Voice can, therefore, be categorized as imagery, patterns of sounds created, rhythm, tone, and diction (Gahern 166). The following is a description of how the voice in Mirikitani’s suicide note helps the reader understand the persona’s reasoning.

Octavia Butler, the author of “Speech Sounds” and many other short stories, is a well-known author for her feminist point of view which might be attributed to her father who died when she was young and her mother taking on the role as the father figure as well as the mother figure. After the bus stop, Valerie Rye, the protagonist in this short story who goes by Rye for a lot of the short story, met Obsidian who Rye assumes his name to be; also, he used to be a LAPD officer. Rye immediately trusts Obsidian to drive her to Pasadena to see what is left of her family. In Octavia Butlers “Speech Sounds,” the men and women have reverse gender roles throughout this short story than we are used to because men in our world tend to have more power over women.

She quickly hurried to the taxi line where there should be a taxi waiting to take her out of the city. She still had the feeling that she was being followed, she sped up her pace until she reached the lone taxi waiting in the line. She got in the taxi and to her surprise it started going even though she didn’t tell the driver a destination. She went to talk to the driver and when she did he slammed on the breaks and they made eye contact. “Mrs. Drover’s mouth hung open for some seconds before she could issue her first scream” (5). Either Mrs. Drover had given in to insanity or the driver was her former lover. I think that she had given in to the paranoia and insanity and that the driver was more than likely a figment of her imagination. The letter left on the table was all to blame for her going crazy. Maybe it was left by a friend, but she forgot, or maybe it really was from her former lover. The draft that she had felt when she went upstairs was probably because the bombings had cracked the foundation and the house wasn’t sealed properly. The taxi driver was probably just a normal taxi driver.

In simple terms, language is commonly defined as the ability to speak to and communicate with others. In reality, the concept of language is far more complex. There are multiple ways in which language can influence the human experience. It allows us to measure empathy, understand the viewpoints of others, listen, and process emotions with the goal of correctly interpreting words and cues from others. Language, however, is an imperfect tool, and although we as humans develop the ability to use and express the same words, we are often unable to control the ways in which others receive the messages that our words are meant to convey. The book Fifteen Dogs illustrates the complexity of language and shows that there are multiple factors that contribute to the way we develop language and communicate with one another. Although each dog is granted human consciousness at the same time, they individually interpret language in their own way based on their experience and perceptions of the new world and the ways in which they form connections with each other and with humans. No dog was better able to communicate with both his peers and with humans than Majnoun. Despite his mastery of language, he struggled to fit in with groups. This essay will argue that Majnoun’s example illustrates the problem of using language alone to ensure effective communication. This will be accomplished by focusing on how Majnoun struggles to understand and feel empathy, the difference between speaking words

My essay topic is the language development of deaf infants and children. In my opinion, this is an important topic to discuss, due to the lack of public knowledge concerning the deaf population. Through this essay, I wish to present how a child is diagnosed as having a hearing loss (including early warning signs), options that parents have for their children once diagnosed (specifically in relation to education of language), common speech teaching methods used today, typical language development for these children, and some emotional, social, and mental difficulties faced by the deaf child and the child’s family that have an immense effect on the child’s education.

While the main purpose of language is to communicate, Joseph Heller creates the world in which language loses its function as a tool for communication in favour of an