Privileging Standard American English = Excluding Minorities

Although this week's exploratory assignment noted that “our readings this week cannot be conflated under the same goals,” I still understood this assignment as a connecting assignment; to me, a “network” requires noting how the texts are similar despite the differences.

My understanding of the assignment was also that we should be focusing on the “significant concerns” that the three authors implied regarding the challenge of studying global rhetorics. With my goals of unity and “significant concerns” within the study of global rhetorics in mind, I actually found the three pieces to be very similar regarding the four themes Mikaela and I highlighted in our (very basic)network: identity, privilege, language, and hegemony.

I particularly found intriguing the continued reference to privilege in each of the three articles from this week. Arnold noted the concept of privilege particularly when describing the persistence of monolingualism. (Arnold 290). At SPC, the missionaries originally wanted to teach in Arabic so that the Syrians  could more easily spread their religious beliefs. (Arnold 281). However, instruction at SPC switched to English for a variety of factors noted by Arnold, including the fact that it became challenging to find competent Protestant professors who could speak Arabic and that Arab faculty were informally disallowed from the professorial ranks. (Arnold 289). Thus, instruction switched to English – effectively beginning the resistance to a translingual framework at SPC. (Arnold 290). Arnold goes on to state, “[i]n the refusal of the monolingual paradigm, the question of whether or not we should ‘take’ or ‘not take’ a translingual approach becomes a question of privilege; asking the question implicates us in a monolingual framework that privileges English and our mastery of it” (Arnold 290-91).

                Cooper also touched on this theme of privilege – particularly, the privileging of Standard American English - when he discussed Benjamin Franklin’s unusual attitude in which he associated speakers of languages other than English with speakers who had undesirable traits. (Cooper 96-97). Cooper’s note that “by the end of the twentieth century, the campaign to eradicate Indian languages had succeeded to such an extent that most Indians in the country were not native speakers of their ancestral languages” indicated privilege to me because, as we have discussed in earlier classes, a major goal of imperialism is normally to eradicate the colonized’s native language. (Cooper 97). This eradication allows the colonizer to maintain a sense of superiority, a hierarchy of value within the persons living within the society.

Cooper’s discussion of language as identity reminded me of Young’s similar discussion: “Language becomes a sort of mask that can be useful in our lives, allowing us to enter into conversations and to explore possibilities. But language can also be dangerous if it is used to cover up parts of our lives that play an important role in the shaping of our identities” (Young 133). Privileging one language over another seems to me to be a form of essentialism; in essence, those who privilege Standard American English inappropriately essentialize people who speak other dialects based solely upon their skin color and speech patterns. This forces those of other skin colors to lead a sort of double-life, something most Caucasians don’t seem to understand:  “Contrasting what Doug Millison says about his feelings in learning new languages with what Royster says . . . Millison sees in language a chance to discover ‘a more authentic self,’ or, as Baillif quotes Lanham as saying, ‘a sincere soul,’ whereas instead Royster sees ‘a range of voices’ that allow her to ‘affirm differences, variety’ . . . for Royster . . . languages are a mode of identities” (Cooper 89).

                For Fatima, one of these identities for Muslim-Americans should be the cultivated affective response. To cultivate such an affective response, Fatima notes the importance of empathy. (Fatima 351). Fatima stresses the need, “in cases that involve policies toward nations that are foreign in terms of culture, language, values, and so on, and that are also subordinate within power hierarchies,” to “look at ourselves through their eyes, to explore their world as a comfortable inhabitant” rather than to “simply form policies based on our own master narratives” (Fatima 351).

                However, Fatima quotes Nancy Snow, who argues that “at least some familiarity is needed with the person toward whom one feels empathetic.” (Fatima 350). “‘If we are not sufficiently similar to those with whom we empathize, imaginatively projecting ourselves into their circumstances would not be a reliable guide to how they feel, nor would attempts to simulate their thoughts and feelings be empathetically accurate’” (Fatima 350).

                Throughout her piece, I believe Fatima relates herself to the Muslim-Americans whose scripts she is describing: she continuously uses the adjectives “our” and the subject “we.” (Fatima 343). Though not purposefully, I believe Fatima’s familiarity with her own essence as a minority – a Muslim-American – indicates the continued issue of privilege in the study of global rhetorics. Because of her membership in the culture which she studies, I believe Fatima has the agency to be able to discuss that culture; and Fatima is cognizant of her agency with her selective wording.

                Do others – particularly, white Westerners – have the agency to do similar global rhetorical studies? Even if we are unfamiliar with the cultures? Or, as noted by Shome and numerous other authors we have studied this semester, “having been primarily schooled in Western academic mode . . . the postcolonial critic’s intellectual perspectives cannot wholly be free of the power relations that she or he is out to displace.” (Shome 47).

                Thus, in setting out to complete this assignment, I very much focused on the similarities between the three articles, particularly the similarities I could find in the author’s views of the complications of studying global rhetorics; and I found more similarities than I expected originally reading the titles of the articles. Particularly, I believed that each author discussed privilege, and this tied in with our discussions of the privilege of scholars in studying these global rhetorics.