4-5 pages

MLA-Style

Standard Submission guidelines

Background

In each of the readings assigned in this unit, language is the subject. These authors, from diverse perspectives, cultures, and genders, each explore how language shapes or is shaped by our individual identities, our community identities, and our society. They raise a host of questions, such as these:

• If language has such power to define who we are, then can we change who we are by changing our language, adopting a new one, or using our own differently?
• If so, in a world in which our our power relative to others (or, in other words, our place(s) in a infinitely complex overlapping and often conflicting array of social hierarchies) is largely determined by our language and how others receive it, what do we gain and what do we lose by the choices we make (to the degree that we have a choice) in how we speak or write? 
• How can language create, reenforce, or erase borders between people of unequal power?
• How can reflection on our own language serve to help us know ourselves?
• How can language be used to gain personal power and how can others use it to gain power over us?

Gather Data
Analyze the similarities and differences in how Tan, Anzaldúa, Rodriguez, Tan, Naylor, and Orwell address issues of language, power, and identity.   As you read, take notes, annotate your texts, develop a chart, transcribe quotations to index cards,

In a prewriting exercise (which we will begin in small groups in class):

1) A rticulate a question that is directly relevant to your life and your experience with language and its relationship to identity and social power dynamics. 

2)  Answer it yourself. 

3)  After analyze each of the assigned essays, make inferences about these authors’ probable answers to your question.

4) Find and copy quotations from the essays that best illustrate/explain your conclusions.

Note: Questions that are vague and unspecific will be disasterous for you in writing this assignment.

Your Assignment
Write a 4- to 5-page essay in which you explain some aspect of the complex relationship between language, identity, and power that directly relavant to you.  Use (at least two of) these authors’ arguments to either challenge  or expand upon your thinking, focusing at least two thirds of your essay positioning your ideas in relationship to theirs.

In addition to ample quotation, summarization, and paraphrasing from the texts, use personal evidence to illustrate the points you make in support of your thesis. Use MLA style for citation and prepare a works cited list.