The life history of the individual is
first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards
traditionally handed down in his community. -Ruth
Benedict
“You mean we have to wear jackets and warm clothes?” I remember saying that earlier this year in front of some girls (who are now my friends). They just looked at me and laughed. To a more sensitive person, this incident could have shaken their identity. But to me it was something that I had to question. Known for my bluntness and for speaking my mind, I asked them what they found so funny. Elena (name changed to protect identity) wiping the tears from her eyes due to her laughing said, “You had to ask, and it’s so funny how you say ‘clothes’.” In my mind I admitted that it really was a stupid question with the jackets considering the weather an all, but the clothes pronunciation? Now that was something I wanted to fight to the death against. “Clothes,” I said again. I received the same response I got earlier-- hysterical laughter. Why do you say “Clodes?” they asked. “Clothes?” I repeated again. The cycle continued. I say “clothes”, they laugh. This was something out of a really bad ESL class, if not a sitcom just waiting to be cancelled. What could the problem really be?
The problem can be simplified by two words: Contact Zone. I had just entered into a contact zone. In Mary Louise Pratt’s work Arts of the Contact Zone, she says that contact zones, “refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power” (575). Pratt’s definition of what contact zones are could very well be applied to the situation my friends and I had over my pronunciation of the word clothes. My friends and I came from different cultures and a mere word had started a “clash” between us—whether or not my pronunciation of the word clothes was valid. Their laughter was an indication of how I had done something outside from what my friends considered normal.
In another light this simple event could be expanded to explore the idea of what Pratt writes as an asymmetrical view of power. Are my friends the power holders- the “dominant culture?” Our upbringings are so very different. While these women grew up here in the Northwest United States where they attended the typical American public school up until their graduation, I, on the other hand, was brought up on Guam, where the education standards were less strict. Now they, like myself, are here at the University of Washington. We all know English, being able to read and write in it. But does their upbringing automatically brand them as being superior to myself, and in turn mark their culture superior to mine? Did I grow up, like Gloria Anzaldúa mentions in her work Entering into the Serpent, speaking a “bastard language,” in this case being English (45)?
Pratt and Anzaldúa bring up important ideas about the role language play in their works: Arts of the Contact Zone, and Entering Into the Serpent, respectively. They both discuss the need to adopt the mainstream community’s language in order to advance and be deemed normal. By carefully analyzing their essays and integrating their ideas into my personal experiences of speaking a variation of the English language in college, I hope to show how contact zones help iron out one’s identity through the language that they speak.
Both authors agree that language is a factor that shapes one’s identity. They support this idea by including personal stories in their works. Pratt for example incorporates in her essay the story of how her son, through baseball collecting has developed his language identity. In the beginning of Pratt’s story she writes about how it her son, Sam, was negotiating baseball card trades with his friend Willie. They had trouble pronouncing the players Manny Trillo, and Carl Yastremski. This was the first instance that Pratt encountered literacy in her son’s life. But as the years progressed of Sam collecting baseball cards, he was able to iron out his ideologies and perceptions. For example, he knew things about architecture from the comparisons of how various baseball stadiums were built. When he entered school he was able to integrate his knowledge of baseball into other things like geography (573-574). Sam’s mistaken pronunciation of the baseball players names are parallel to my pronunciation of the word clothes, and the other words I pronounce differently. Although I can not agree that the word clothes has set up my ideologies and perceptions like baseball had for Sam, my word pronunciations were the stepping stones to higher levels of learning, and when I entered school here in the United States I was in for a surprise.
Anzaldúa and Pratt both bring up the whole schooling system and their personal interactions with it. They share their feelings on how the education system deprives people of the idea of diversity and focuses on uniting the class in one homogenous community. “Teacher- Pupil language . . . tends to be described from the point of view of the teacher and teaching, not from the point of view of pupils and pupiling” (584). It is true how one never is aware of the ideas of students. Most classes in the University of Washington are lectures where there is no room for student input. An only exception being would be when the professors ask for an answer from the students (which is even more one sided in the sense that the textbooks were written by the professors themselves!). This idea can directly be seen in Anzaldúa’s own personal school experience of how she was hit by the teacher if she spoke Spanish and how her teacher even said for her to go back to Mexico if she didn’t like speaking English (41). Anzaldúa’s teacher was the rule-maker in this case, and like Pratt says, was the one whose point of view was being advocated. Anzaldúa also goes on to mention how the dominant culture uses language against a minority-- they must adopt the mainstream language (45). In many of my classes, the professors expect one to grasp and understand the material on the spot. This means more work for me because of my upbringing where, the education standards were lower. I was never really exposed to this material nor did I have mastery of some what are considered here in the United States, basic concepts, like that of my friends and classmates. So through my classes here at the University I was forced to add another dimension to my identity because I did not speak the same academic language that the majority. Developing a new identity is essential for one to be accepted into the majority. However, does this compromise one’s own individual community?
Both Anzaldúa and Pratt discuss the subject of an individual’s community and duality of culture, focusing particularly on the concept of language. Pratt talks mainly about the ideas of Benedict Anderson to describe what a community is. Basically a community is imagined, limited, and sovereign (582). Anderson says that there is a feeling of “fraternity” that makes it possible to have a community. Having a common language unites and creates a feeling of community. Pratt goes on to say that when a newcomer enters this language community he or she must be willing to follow the rules or norms shared by all participants (583). Anzaldúa supports this idea by talking about how she has developed a “home tongue” that she speaks with her brothers and sisters. This is her community (43). She defines being Mexican as a state of soul, and earlier talks about how this identifies her (48-49). Through my interactions with friends and the people of Washington in general, I too am finding out what these communities are. Like Anzaldúa I too have developed a “home tongue” that I speak with my friends from Hawaii and Guam, that I appropriately dub my island crew.
These two essays speak of many things. Most importantly it speaks of gaining an identity through language. I think that Anzaldúa sums it up best by saying, “Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity- I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (46).
Using the information presented in Pratt and Anzadúa’s essay I view the clothes incident as a genuine contact zone experience. I think because of my friends’ different language communities, they see my pronunciation in a different light. This gives me two choices: To change my pronunciation of the word clothes and in the process give up my identity as an island boy or I could assimilate.
In the sixth grade I was forced to memorize a poem. It goes something like this:
“Are you Chinese?
Yes.
Are you American
Are you really Chinese?
No not quite….
Are you really American?
Well actually you see…
But I would rather say it yes
Not neither nor, not either or
But both and not only
The customs I do
I would rather say it twice. Yes”
The picture was of an Asian girl with a dragon on one side and an American flag on the other. Life isn’t so one sided. People are all dual in their language identities.
So to go with the moral of the story, I chose option number one. I retained the way I pronounced clothes. Even though I am branded differently and laughed at, it will be something that my friends must get used to. Over time, it will sound normal to them and maybe eventually enter their vocabulary. My friends and I must embrace the positives of the contact zone experience. Although I gained a new dimension to myself, that of being a college student and understanding academic language, I still have a home tongue that makes up the identity I grew up with.
Now, don’t get me started on the word shoot.
Sources
Cited:
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Academic Discourse: Readings for Argument and Analysis. Ed. Gail Stygall. 2nd Edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 573-578
Anzaldua, Gloria. “Entering Into the Serpent.” Academic Discourse: Readings for Argument and Analysis. Ed. Gail Stygall. 2nd Edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 25-51