Category: Identity

Esperanto: A Humble Lingua Franca

6/1/2021

by Aleksandr Chebotarev

Because of my background in linguistics, people have often told me how great it would be if the whole world spoke one language, if everyone could understand each other without the blockage of language barriers. They say it as if they came up with the idea. I smile and nod, letting them believe they are the egalitarian genius they see themselves as. This idea is nothing new, and it’s been attempted before. Humanity just doesn’t want it. We’re too overpowered by our sense of “us vs. them.”

When people from around the world have tried to speak a unifying language that could end all language barriers, it was attacked time and time again until it was subdued by the language of business.

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The Politics of A Black Existence

5/1/2021

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by Dominick Marconi

There was this popular meme that recirculated in 2020 which featured a still frame from the Dreamworks animated film Madagascar. It showed the four main characters, Alex the Lion, Gloria the Hippo, Marty the Zebra, and Melman the Giraffe with puzzled expressions on their faces and overlaid text that read, simply: “Why are you black?”

Everytime I see it I laugh. Everytime I think about it I laugh. I cannot speak as to why anybody else might find it funny, but to me, the comedy not only stems from the absurdity of the question's nature, but in its truth.

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White Vernacular English: The Boss of Student Writing

6/1/2018

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Photo: 12news

I’ve taught freshman composition courses for almost two years now, expecting my diverse body of students from multicultural backgrounds to all coalesce and perform to one standard above all others: White Vernacular English (WVE) or White American Vernacular English (WAVE). As writers, we pride ourselves on being open-minded yet authentic, and we hope our students do the same—as long as they adhere to what we consider valid style of writing. Why have the rigid, outdated principles the foundation of college composition was built on not shifted to accept other vernaculars?

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Pronoun Rediscovery: Media as a Platform for Change

5/1/2017

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by Sarah Knapp

The above videos contain clips from two very different, but two very popular TV shows: RuPaul’s Drag Race and Steven Universe. What do all of these seemingly unrelated scenarios have in common? In each clip, there are quite a few different uses of pronouns, some of which seem confusing or don’t exactly fit our expectations. There is a powerful force at work here: gender is being redefined. Subtly, and sometimes very overtly, the language used to talk about gender is being changed and shaped by the media that surrounds us.

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Disrupting Normalcy: The Key to Better Writing

4/2/2016

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by Michael Fotos

In kindergarten, I sat on a rug as every student discussed what their favorite color was. The room was silent save for one voice at a time--green, black, yellow, orange—normal. And then something happened when I spoke the word pink. My favorite color was pink and before the adjacent child revealed his favorite color to be the enchanting color of blue, everyone laughed. He likes pink, Ha! And I cried.

What is it about our world that says that blue is fit for a boy and pink belongs to girls and that if a boy likes pink it is worthy of ridicule? What of makeup, heels, skin tight dresses? What happens when a man plays the role of woman, when a man enters the genre called being a woman? I would argue that entertaining this genre and many others has benefits for all people, especially writers.

Entertaining an unfamiliar genre has the potential to enrich life experiences by providing perceptions of the world. By disrupting what we believe is normal, disruption becomes possible. We explore truths we are not used to, and explorers of truth must think outside the box, and consequently, prove to be excellent writers. Writers who challenge the normal create original works that transcend prose and poetry. Writers who only adhere to genres fall flat.

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Esperanto: A Humble Lingua Franca

The Politics of A Black Existence

White Vernacular English: The Boss of Student Writing

Pronoun Rediscovery: Media as a Platform for Change

Disrupting Normalcy: The Key to Better Writing

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