Language and politics

I've used this article in classes last year to demonstrate the power of language. I offer it here to anyone who's interested in the political impact of language:

Why the GOP Demonizes "Illegals"

By Peter Beinart | The Daily Beast – October 24, 2011



I turned on the Republican presidential debate last week and learned something. In today’s GOP, the correct term for a human being who crosses the U.S. border without a visa in search of a brutally difficult, poorly paid job that few native-born Americans wish to do but on which our national economy depends is “illegal.”
Not “illegal immigrant” or even “illegal alien,” which implies that the people cooking our food and making our beds arrived here by spaceship. But merely “illegal.” Maybe in the general election, when Mitt Romney goes trolling for votes in the Southwest, he’ll soften up and merely dehumanize America’s most vulnerable people via adjective. But when you’re battling Rick Perry and Herman Cain, adjectives aren’t good enough. You need the noun.
“Illegal” is the latest in a long line of euphemisms that politicians use to signal their antipathy to a reviled racial or ethnic group, in this case, Latinos. No, no, you say, this has nothing to do with animosity toward Hispanics; it’s about protecting the border and obeying the law. Really? Then why don’t we call the CEOs of the companies that hire illegal immigrants “illegals”? Our last three presidents all violated America’s drug laws. The current Treasury secretary violated America’s tax laws. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay recently was convicted of money laundering. I look forward to hearing Mitt Romney and Fox News refer to them as “illegals” too.
People from non-stigmatized ethnic groups don’t get called “illegals” no matter what they do. When I grew up in Boston in the 1980s, the city was filled with Irish workers with forged immigration papers. But since Irish politicians ran the city, those workers were treated gingerly. In the mid-1990s, after the first World Trade Center bombing prompted a federal crackdown on illegal immigrants, agents from what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service swooped into Boston and deported 243 undocumented workers from the Dominican Republic and another 16 from tiny Cape Verde. As for the Irish, as Boston Magazine noted in 2008, the INS agents managed to find only four. Had a newscaster in the Boston of my youth called the undocumented Irish “illegals,” he would have been fired.
It’s tempting to dismiss “illegals” as another poll-tested, cotton-candy word that no one takes seriously. After all, if Americans really believed that illegality defined undocumented workers—that they were lawless and dangerous at their core—would millions of families entrust them with the care of their kids?
On the other hand, it’s just possible that the rhetorical dehumanization of millions of Latinos may have something to do with the big spike in anti-Latino hate crimes over the last decade. In 2010, for instance, a Phoenix man named Gary Kelley shot his neighbor, Juan Verela, after yelling “Go back to Mexico or die!” No word yet on whether Kelley is an “illegal” as defined by Mitt Romney.

Remix

Last week, I mentioned what I call my First Law of Literature: “There is no such thing as an original story.” I'd like to come back to this thought as I announce the launch of a great new educational website.

We place so much pressure on ourselves and out students to be “original,” when the truth is, originality, frankly, is overrated. The creative process is as much about rearranging old ideas in new ways as it is about coming up with something utterly new.

Case in point: take out your cellphone. Yes, I know you have one on you. I'll bet you a month's supply of anything that your phone has a camera on it. Whether you take pictures with it or not, whether you even know how to use it or not, it's there. Now, the camera is hardly a new invention, and for that matter, neither is the cellphone. But somebody had the great idea of taking these two things which already existed and combining them in a way that they hadn't before. The idea caught on so thoroughly that nowadays, good luck finding a cellphone that doesn't have a camera on it.

Old ideas being combined in new ways; there's a term for this: remix.

Now, many people hear “remix” and automatically think in terms of music – DJ Somebody hunched over a pair of turntables, operating enough switches and knobs to operate a B-2 bomber. But remix exists outside of music as well, and, in fact, has a long and noble history in art, literature, history, as well as in music.

When an author is looking for an image, idea, verse, or what have you, they will invariably look to those works which influenced them. In the case of the “classic” works of literature, the ones most of us had to suffer through in school, the authors' inspiration tends to come from one of three sources: The Bible, Shakespeare, or mythology. Parallels to the Christ story can be found everywhere from Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea to Harry Potter. Lines, characters, and plots have been stolen from Shakespeare for centuries – not that he can complain; he was pretty blatant himself when it came to remixing. And mythological stories of gods and heroes have inspired our modern heroes, in subtle ways (Superman/Hercules), and more direct ones (Marvel's Thor).

More modern sources tend to have more modern inspirations, and popular culture is fertile ground for remix. Popular music, cinema, gaming, etc., lifts so blatantly from one another that one could go on forever drawing parallels between them all. So, rather than ignore the elephant in the room, why not embrace it?

To this end, my brother and I have been working on projects designed to use remix as an educational tool – encouraging students to explore their creative sides by working with a set list of raw materials that can be combined in new and unique ways, limited only by their imagination. We're currently collaborating on a chapter in an upcoming textbook (details to come), but the companion site for this chapter is already up and running:

http://sites.google.com/site/educationalremixing/

This site, brand new and expected to grow, will be a collection of ideas, materials, and links to incorporate remix into classroom activities and projects. The projects have varying technology requirements, but for the most part, anyone with a computer and internet access should be able to do them.

I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing what people do with the materials provided on the site. I only wish I could take the credit for what's been done there, but it was my brother who originally conceived the idea of educational remixing; I edited and rearranged it for the site.

In other words, I remixed it. Enjoy.

Another Classic Book Review

Another ESL Text review -- this one from 2004. I think that ideally, textbooks should be evaluated and updated by their schools every 5 years, but with budgets getting slashed left, right, and center, that's not always a realistic goal. So you can expect to find a lot of older books out there. Some are still good, others...

The text is Grammar Sense by Cheryl Pavlik. (2004), published by Oxford UP. 480 pp. 23 chapters in 9 units. Book 2 of a series.

This book is intended to be used for adult education according to the Oxford UP website. It is best suited for students operating on WIDA level 3 (Developing). It comes with a CD-ROM containing supplemental lessons and audio files. There is no online component.

The topics seem geared to a younger audience than the adults that the books website claim it is for, although there are some areas (one chapter contains a unit on the 1960s) which fit the age group. Chapters are arranged by grammatical lessons, not themes. A chapter may follow a theme briefly, switch to a new theme, followed by a series of exercises following no theme at all. Because the content is grammar, content and language instruction are one and the same. Evaluation and assessment are handled with regular exercises throughout each chapter.

Reading is the primary language skill used, although the exercises also use the CD-ROM extensively to practice listening skills as well. The most-used language function is determining facts, through the use of exercises such as true-or-false questions after a reading passage, or making judgments of fact or opinion, such as describing scenes depicted in illustrations. Grammar is presented in a variety of ways, including exercises involving filling in the blanks on charts conjugating verbs in sentences. New vocabulary is not introduced except as it relates to a given lesson, for example, an exercise using the phrase “used to.”

he exercises are presented in a logical order in relation to each other, but not in relation to any kind of overarching theme. For example, chapter 4, The Simple Past Tense, begins with a series of exercises about verb forms, then about their meaning and use, first in relation to a theme about the 1960s, then about the Wright brothers, and then a loose series of exercises without any theme. There seems to be little to no scaffolding done outside the book's own lessons – at no point did the book call on students to use their own knowledge or experiences in any noticeable way. Some exercises require listening skills from the CD-ROM to complement the reading exercises, which does take into account different learning styles. Some exercises do encourage hands-on activities, requiring students to engage in scripted conversations with each other using lessons from the chapter, but more such opportunities are needed. There doesn't seem to be any accommodation for learners of different levels of proficiency.

The book does provide some illustrations to build some background – a section on Iceland included a map of the country, and the section on the 1960s included a photo of a peace march, but not nearly enough illustrations were used. In one 20 page chapter, a total of 6 illustrations were used, not including an exercise which asked learners to describe events depicted in hand-drawn pictures.

I was disappointed in the presentation of this book. Although it would be a serviceable grammar book for a mainstream English class, it simply does not take into account the needs of ESL students. I would insure that the lessons were more strongly linked to themes, and not abandon those themes halfway through each chapter. I would also provide more hands-on activities which allowed students to use their own real-life experiences as a starting point for learning the lessons in each unit. I would also add more variety to the lessons to take into account multiple intelligences and learning styles, as well as suggestions for students at lower proficiency levels. Lastly, I would include more illustrations and realia to put content in context so students have a better idea what they are discussing.

DON'T Stop Me if You've Heard This One...

It should go without saying that the best writers are the best readers. The trick, however, is to encourage students to read, especially in an era of instant entertainment via movies, television, and the internet, where actual books are considered time-consuming and archaic. While I've met some professors who look down on such media, preferring the “classics,” I've found that, when the goal is effective storytelling, our students are a lot more in touch with the classics than many of us (or even themselves) give them credit for. The first step, as I have done many times in the past, is to make them aware of it.

“I'm going to tell you a story,” I usually begin with my students, “and I want you to figure out what story it is.” The students listen carefully; they love a good game. “Let's start with a boy – in fact, let's make him an orphan: parents are dead; he lives with his aunt and uncle; very unhappy childhood. One day, an old man shows up at his home and tells this boy that he's a hero – or at least he's going to be one. There's a villain threatening the world, and only the boy can stop him – but not yet; he needs to be trained. So the old man takes the boy away to a special place, unlike anything he's ever imagined. Here, he makes some new friends, makes a few enemies, learns the rules of this new and special world as well as the skills to be the hero everyone says he's going to be. So, armed with this new knowledge, as well as a few magical items to help him along the way, the boy defeats the villain and saves the world!

“Now... what's the story?”

If the students are at all familiar with pop culture (and let's face it, they all are), they've probably started blurting out “Harry Potter!” by the time I mentioned the old man at the door. And yes, I assure them, Harry Potter is the right answer.

So is Star Wars.

So is (if you change the boy to a girl) The Wizard of Oz.

So is (if my Nintendo-playing students are to be trusted) The Legend of Zelda.

I never get tired of the wide variety of answers I get to this question – it's a cross-section of popular culture as I get answers from Lord of the Rings to Batman Begins. The story may deviate in a few details, but in the end, it's the same story, and it's one that the students already know.

What I've just demonstrated here is two things: First, what I cal Shamburg's First law of Literature: There is no such thing as an original story. I often accentuate this point by giving my students a second, simpler story to identify: “Boy meets girl. They're not supposed to fall in live, but they do anyway. It ends badly, and in the end, a lot of people end up dead.” Even someone who's never read or seen Romeo and Juliet can spot this one a mile off – because they've seen this story done and redone in so many different ways – put it to music, and it's West Side Story. Put it on a boat, and it's Titanic. Put it on another planet, and it's Avatar. James Cameron has shown himself to be a master of dressing up the simplest and most well-known of stories, as long as you write him a blank check for special effects. (Then again, he's making billions of dollars on these films and I'm not, so who am I to begrudge him?)

Second, what's being displayed here is mythologist Joseph Campbell's image of what he called “The Hero's Journey.” It is a pattern that exists in heroic myths and stories from just about every culture in human history, and for those not familiar with Campbell or mythology, The Hero With a Thousand Faces is a good read.

Campbell has had such an effect on modern storytelling, that Christopher Vogler took Campbell's Hero's Journey and applied it to his own profession – screenwriting. Vogler has worked on a number of Hollywood films, including several Disney animated films, and has applied Campbell's pattern to the storytelling. His book, The Writer's Journey, is a how-to guide for modern-day storytellers to write in such a way that resonates with their audience.

I've taken ideas from both Campbell and Vogler and applied them – in a stripped-down and simplified form – to my own lessons about literature. The key, I believe, to making students active and engaged readers is to reassure them that they are not treading into uncharted waters, but rather, exploring themes, ideas, even stories and characters, that they've already seen many times before. Making connections, I tell them, is the key to being a good reader. As you read a story, watch a movie, or even play a video game, the question you should always ask yourself is, “Where have I seen this before?”

My students have made some surprising connections. I'll never forget an Honors American Literature class, as we were discussing an image in the opening chapter of The Scarlet Letter of a rosebush growing outside the prison door, when one of my students commented, “It's just like Tupac's 'Rose That Grew F.rom Concrete'!” I wasn't familiar with Mr. Shakur's poetry at the time, but after a quick summary from my student (followed up by a weekend trip to Barnes & Noble) I had a new respect for my students' ability to make connections between literature and their own lives and world, which is the best reason to read.

And I still have that book of Tupac Shakur's poetry on my shelf. He's not half bad.

References:

Campbell, J. (2008). The Hero With a Thousand Faces (3^rd ed.). Novato: New World Library.

Shakur, T.(1999). The Rose That Grew From Concrete. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Vogler, C. (2007). The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (3^rd ed.). Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions.