Summary Of Born Of Address Language By Claudia Rankine

Throughout the essay the writer employs a variety of pronouns in a genuine attempt to persuade the audience and draw them in. As an example, he successfully includes the readers into his

“The rain this mourning pours from the gutters and everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses what you know is there because doubt is inexorable; you put on your glasses. The trees, their bark, their leaves, even the dead ones, are more vibrant wet. Yes, and it’s raining. Each moment is like this—before it can be known, categorized as similar to another thing and dismissed, it has to be experienced, it has to be seen. What did he just say? Did she really just say that? Did I hear what I think I just heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? The moment sinks. Still you want to stop looking at the trees. You want to walk out and stand among them. And as light as the rain seems, it still rains down on you.” (page 9)

Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability to speak the way society expects. Disallowing others to prove their misconceptions of her, Tan exerted herself in excelling at English throughout school. She felt a need to rebel against the proverbial view that writing is not a strong

The Language of 'The Catcher in the Rye' Author(s): Donald P. Costello Source: American Speech, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Oct., 1959), pp. 172-181 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/454038 . Accessed: 30/01/2011 11:19

“There is more pleasure to building castles in the air than on the ground.” This quote by Edward Gibbon illustrates the intensity of writing and what gratification it can hold. When one writes, they are not confined to one certain formula. A person is able to express their thoughts and feelings in any way they choose. Language is a border for many people in that some cannot comprehend a certain language, understand how to use it, or recognize what is being said to them. On the other side of the border, they are not viewed as equals or as important compared to those who are not competing with this barrier. In his essay “Coming into Language,” Jimmy Santiago Baca uses his personal experiences to demonstrate how much

Throughout the essay, the use of vernacular speech can be observed when looking at the dialogue between characters. For example, “Good day, Mrs. Henderson. Momma responded with “How you, Sister Flowers?”. In the dialogue between Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Flowers, it can be seen that Flowers speaks respectively with sophistication while Mrs. Henderson speaks carelessly using an older southern tone. This results in a clear comparison between the characters in the essay which represent the importance of education and vocabulary. The constant use of the wrong verb by “Momma” bothers the author, giving us a better idea of language’s role in her life. In addition, the author foreshadows part of the lifeline, so we gain a better understanding of the story when the lifeline is presented later on.

Citizen, written by Claudia Rankine in 2014, narrates testimonies of systematic racism and every day micro aggressions through poems, essays, scripts and images. Rankine documents the racist encounters through the second person point of view for the reader to feel and understand the effects racism has on the body and mind. This paper will examine hypervisibility and invisibility of the black body embedded in the novel because of decades of racism. Rankine emphasizes the sensory emotions and feelings of the black body as a response to America’s reluctance to recognize and empathize with black men and women.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kendy Menelas, Department of English, Seminole State College, Sanford, FL 32773.

Graff then goes on to establish his ethos in the first few paragraphs while continuing to expand the thoughts and ideas on pathos throughout his essay. He begins to build his community and trust by recognizing his own credentials and sharing his personal background in writing. One of the first things noticed from the footnote about Gerald Graff’s professional career is that he has vast experience in the writing department. He is an English professor at a prestigious university, a past president of the Modern Language Association, and part of the professional association of scholars and teachers of English and other languages (198). But, since his background only assists his argument and does not define it, it is crucial to also look at his word choice, mood, language, and ideology in order to fully claim Graff a credible author.

Citizen is a narrative written to connect with the reader by telling stories in the second person . In the novel, “Citizen”, Claudia Rankine uses short stories and personal experiences to encapsulate the struggle that African American people endure when they are thrown against a sharp white background .

The narrator’s diction on the page can be described as vain due to the fact he doesn’t need an introduction when the narrator says it is “not really necessary” (4). The narrator’s diction reveals that he has a methodical, stone cold personality that puts the narrator in a more superior position then the human race. Achieving

“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

Throughout the essay the writer employs a variety of pronouns in a genuine attempt to persuade the audience and draw them in. As an example, he successfully includes

Claudia Rankine analyze racism to its core, bringing to surface that miniscule event are just as problematic as televised one. Her words are beautifully brutal, striking up emotions for anyone that reads it. As readers we are taken through a journey from past to present events of racial incidents experienced by different genders and ages. Above all, Claudia provides a strong indication that racism is far from over.

This dialect, Tan says, became their "language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language [she] grew up with" (Tan 589). This type of language creates an identity for Tan, one which she was ashamed of growing up. This feeling of shame later backfired as an adult in her fiction writing. She wrote to prove she had "mastery over the English language" with large words, unheard of to the common ear, and sentences she thought were "wittily crafted." But as Tan matured, she realized she should envision an audience for her stories; this audience was her mother. She began to write stories using "all the Englishes" she grew up with. As she found out, this change of her own conception of language enriched her writing and added to her ethos. After all, her mother’s language, as she heard it, was "vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery." "That was the language that had helped shaper the way [she] saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world" (Tan 590). Her "mother tongue" is her identity as a writer, and she learned that someone’s English does not reflect the quality of what he/she has to say.