Satire Project Update

My group and I will be doing a skit about that topic of man becoming slave to technology. So far we have decided that a few students in our group will be in a video that will be shown it in class and a few will be presenting in class. We plan to film the video sometime this week, hopefully on Thursday in class. My group started working on our script on a google docs, which is shared with everyone in the group. We need to edit it and add a few lines so that our presentation is a little longer but it's more or less finished. We have also decided on costumes and what everyone will be wearing, both in class and in the video and are in the process of making props and signs that we will need for the video and class. We still need to do the group reflection essay but we know what we should write.

The Word Police 3/5/17

"The Word Police", written by Michiko Kakutani, is an article about the rise of political correctness and its impact on language and society. Kakutani describes the people who advocate for P.C. as the "self appointed language police" and says they believe that by enforcing new rules, regarding what words are politically correct to use, they will be able to fix some of the world's biggest issues, racism and sexism. The author uses irony, sarcasm, and mockery to express how ridiculous she finds the efforts of the P.C. police. She feels that their efforts are exaggerated to the point that they become a distraction from the real issues. As political correctness grows, euphemisms grow with it and it allows people to hide their true identities and the inequalities of life. As Orwell said, euphemisms are "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Kakutani says that by changing "testimony" to "ovarimony" or "women" to "womyn" to avoid the suggestion of sexism, or getting upset over phrases like "bullish on America" or "the city of brotherly love", it "tends to distract attention from the real problems of prejudice and injustice that exist in society at large." I felt that Kakutani's biggest point was that actions speak louder than words. She said "Calling the homeless 'the underhoused' doesn't give them a place to live; calling the poor 'the economically marginalized' doesn't help them pay the bills". If you want to fix the world's problems, you don't do it by changing the usage of words. Like Kakutani said, do you really think  making such changes will remove the prejudice in people's minds?

Politics and the English Language 2/4/17

George Orwell, in his essay, "Politics and the English Language", explains that stale imagery and lack of precision have diminished the English language. He talks about how the language is declining and changing in a bad way due to economic and political causes and goes on to provide his readers with five passages as examples of how writing has become unclear and faulty. Orwell says that aside from the individual faults of each passage, the five passages share similar flaws. It is as if each writer either has a meaning and can't express it, or he unintentionally says something else, or he is almost uncaring as to whether or not his words have meaning. According to Orwell, "this mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing." He states that political writing is bad writing because it uses the English language so mechanically, repeating the same words and imitating previous writings, that the life of what is being said is drained. Some political speeches aren't even written by the politicians who give the speeches. Orwell also explains that political writing is one that uses vague language specifically to hide important details from the audience or to limit the image that forms in the audience's head. "Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness" because things like "the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, and the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan" are too brutal for most people to face. But vague language also allows the audience to be misled on purpose and Orwell wants his readers to be aware of that. 

I found Orwell's essay to be very interesting yet difficult to read. After understanding his reasoning for the essay I found that I fully agree with him. The English language is diminishing and is being taken advantage of in political writing. Politicians are able to bend and cloud their words to reveal only what they want the audience to hear. When serious events occur, deadly or dangerous, political speeches are purposely made vague so that the people understand that there is something going on without getting mental pictures of the deaths or specifics. On one hand it's noble that they want to shield the people from the brutalities happening around us but on the other hand we don't fully understand the severity of the events due to the fact that certain details are hidden from us. Imprecise and unclear language also allows governments to conceal violence or illegal acts in agreeable words and phrases. This kind of language in political writing shows that the speaker does not want to reveal all the facts about what has happened or is about to happen, especially if it only benefits him/ her and not the audience. Orwell's purpose was to inform his readers that vague language is being used, especially in political language to brain wash or trick people and gain their trust but if we learn to avoid this kind of language ourselves then we won't be misled by politicians because we'll know that there is something not being said.

The Case Against Affirmative Action 1/14/17

David Sacks' and Peter Thiel's "The Case Against Affirmative Action" is an article about the negatives of affirmative action in Stanford and how the real problem it is that people are trying to solve a problem that no longer exists; the problem being that admissions officers are racist when accepting students into Stanford, they're not. The authors state that Stanford's admissions office cannot right the wrongs of history, but its mission is still to admit the best class of students it can find. The sole criteria being individual achievement; not just grades and test scores but also "accomplishments in athletics, music, student government, drama, school clubs and other extracurricular efforts." They feel that race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference should not have a place on this list; "these are traits, not achievements." Sacks and Thiel say that if diversity were really the goal, students should get admitted based on unusual characteristics, not based on race. The authors ended their article by making a good point. "A Stanford without affirmative action will be a Stanford in which the question of who belongs here will no longer need to be answered. It will no longer need to be answered because it will no longer need to be asked."

I absolutely love the way Sacks and Thiel ended the article. Affirmative action has caused and promoted discrimination to the extent that students in Stanford are questioning who belongs in the school and who is there due to some sort of diversity matrix. Without affirmative action people will know that all the students at Stanford genuinely deserve to be there. After doing research on the issue of affirmative action, I feel that affirmative action was established with the correct mindset but it was carried out wrong. I think diversity is very important; it helps show people different perspectives on things. But there are other ways to achieve diversity without basing it on race. There will always be racist people in the world but forcing a school to admit students, who may not even belong in the school based on their achievements, because they come from a minority is not right and it's definitely not necessary. We already have diversity, in schools and in work places; even our president is from a minority group and he became president because he was most qualified not based on his race. While affirmative action was developed to level out the playing field, it gives way to discrimination and makes it unfair to the people who are denied a spot in school or work because a person of a minority took their spot, and not because he/she is more qualified. Like Sacks and Thiel said, "It is a strange cure that generates its own disease." Affirmative action was put in place to diversify and include minorities but when students start to suspect that other students were admitted because they come from a minority, the very racism and discrimination that affirmative action was created to stop, occurs. It gives the impression that minority groups just can't compete, and that's not true.

What's the Connection? (Winter Break Assignment) 12/27/2016

While doing research on the connection between language, race and gender I came upon many articles that say our language reflects our society's deeply rooted power structure. It establishes a specific gender's dominance over another and gives way to sexist and racist thinking. 

"Language, Gender and Power", written by Sally Raskoff, is an article that reveals our society as one characterized by male power. Raskoff explains how the English language is a sexist language and talks about different terms that set males and females apart and give males the upper hand in situations. She mentions the way we address people formally. While men are referred to as "Mr.", women can be referred to as "Miss" (single or a girl), "Mrs." (married), or "Ms." (grown woman, marital status undetermined), giving them three titles to categorize themselves into while men only have the one. Raskoff also goes on to argue that while there are curse words that are gender neutral, such as referring to one's posterior, there are some curses that specifically target women and their body parts. For example, the "b-word to indicate a crabby female", or the c-word and p-word that refer to a women's genitals. Raskoff explains that even though the words may be aimed at a man or a woman, they have a negative affect on the female gender. The words all correlate to women giving them a bad representation and image. Her last point is that American culture teaches boys early on to be masculine or "assertive, aggressive, strong, a leader, and heterosexual" while encouraging girls to be "passive, nurturing, caring, mothering, and otherwise subordinate." It seems no one wants woman to come up from under a man. 

Language is not only related to gender, it's also related to race. In the article "Hearing Skin Color: The Connection Between Language And Race", written by Nic Subtirelu, Subtirelu explains that physical features are not the only things that categorize people by their race. The language used to describe them or even the people's voices can be used to assign race to others also. The author talks about experiments that were done to see if people can identify the race of a person by just listening to their voice. Subtirelu says that "people's physical characteristics are simply one route we can take to arrive at a judgment of a person's race... language allows us to assign people into different races as well." He discusses the ability of language to signal race and exploit racial stereotypes like is done in The Lion King. The two hyenas in the movie have African American or Latino accented English and they're both thugs, while Simba speaks in Standard English and is a hero. Subtirelu says that things like this give way to racial discrimination and we need to be wary of tones used when speaking about a certain race as well as stay away from racial stereotypes when describing a person in terms of his or her race.

My research to find the relationship between language, race and gender opened my eyes to things I never paid attention to before. I've always known that we live in a male dominate world but I never realized the affects that it has on language and vise versa or the affect of language on race. Raskoff and Subtirelu made excellent points that were both interesting and unfortunately true. I agree with Raskoff when she mentioned the difference in the way men and women are greeted. I don't see why women should have to reveal their marital status while men just get the title "Mr." which says that it doesn't matter what the man's marital status is, it's irrelevant. The title gives a woman a certain identity or image, and informs people about her personal life while a man's title gives nothing away about who he is. I really like Raskoff's piece because it showed out of the box thinking. She mentioned how people use the word 'seminal' "to credit people with creating work so important that it has changed the way we think about something" and then makes the connection that seminal is derived from the word semen, which makes it sound like men create things that are so important that it changes our views on things. I think it's a bit far fetched but I really like that she made that connection. Where did that thought even come from? But then later on she mentions that "men have received credit, even if women were involved in their creation" and I really liked this point because women are sometimes left in the shadows while men get the praise even though I bet no man would survive without a woman, even if it’s his mother. Raskoff's article made it clear that the English language is sexist. Women grow up learning that they're not the ideal image of a particular role because our language uses sexist words, like policeman, councilman, mankind, and fireman and it excludes the female gender in many instances, but for it to change and become gender neutral it would take decades and both genders would need to start using gender neutral words. I have a feeling that that will never happen so there is a very small chance that language will change to be neutral. Many people don't realize how hurtful language can be. The fact that we use words that are offensive to one another in order to show power proves that we have a power struggle in our society. Words definitely impact the way we view one another, whether it be about race or gender. Subtirelu proved how specific genders are perceived and how language further promotes racist thinking. So words certainly have the ability to label us and affect the way people regard us. These articles were very effective in showing me different views of the connection between language, race and gender and I enjoyed reading other people's opinions. I agree that the connection stems off of power and I don't think that it will ever necessarily change but anything can happen. Maybe one-day society will willingly change our language for the better.

http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2007/12/language-gender.html

https://linguisticpulse.com/2013/09/08/hearing-skin-color-the-connections-between-language-and-race/

I Want A Wife 12/17/2016

These past weeks we've been discussing gender stereotypes in class, and one essay that caught my attention was "I want a Wife" written by Judy Brady.
"I want a Wife" is an essay about the demands required of a wife. Brady's purpose was to show the impact of double standards and emphasize the obvious difference and inequality between the roles of a husband and wife. She mainly uses irony and exaggeration to achieve this purpose and informs her audience of the injustices that wives face. Brady writes "I want a wife who will remain sexually faithful to me... and...who understands that my sexual needs may entail more than strict adherence to monogamy." She explains that women must stay faithful in their marriages because men don't have time to be jealous and worry whether or not their wife is cheating, but men don't have to be faithful and their wives should understand that. Brady describes how wives are regarded like objects, or property, that can be replaced by men when she says "If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife...I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one." She also shows how wives are treated like maids when she says "I want a wife who will have the house clean, will prepare a special meal, serve it to me and my friends, and not interrupt". But the most ironic part of Brady's essay is that she writes all the roles of the ideal wife that men want so that men are "left free", but men are already free since the wives do everything anyway and the men say they want to be independent, but they're dependent on their wives for everything.
I found this essay to be very effective. Brady uses ethos and establishes her credibility as a wife when she explains that she belongs "to that classification of people known as wives" and lets her readers know that everything she's saying is true. The structure and repetition in her text makes it difficult to read, because she uses long sentences without many pauses, which makes her readers realize how difficult it is to be a wife. There were a lot of moments in the text that made me angry and say "excuse me?" because the men in my family are very old fashioned and expect these things from their wives but it's because of that connection that I honestly loved this essay. Because if you can have someone to do everything, except eat, sleep, and use the bathroom for you, "who wouldn't want a wife?"

Pillow Angel Ethics 12/03/16

Pillow Angel Ethics is an article written by Nancy Gibbs about a treatment that has raised serious ethical concerns. The treatment in question is called the "Ashley Treatment" and was named after the procedure done on a 6- year old girl named Ashley, who suffers from brain damage. The article discusses Ashley's circumstances and what was done to "improve" her quality of life. She was given a high dose estrogen treatment to keep her from growing and doctors removed her uterus, to prevent potential discomfort from menstrual cramps and pregnancy in the event of rape, and her breast buds, because of the family's history of cancer and fibrocystic disease. Ashley's parents felt that as Ashley grew bigger it would be more difficult to care for her so they thought keeping her small would benefit both Ashley, by making "it more possible to include her in typical family life and activities that provide her with needed comfort, closeness, security and love", and her caregivers, by not letting her be an inconvenience to them. The author used a lot of viewpoints from many doctors and important medical facts about Ashley's case and therefore developed logos in her article. Gibbs mentioned how many doctors found that the benefits of the treatment outweighed the cons but others found the treatment to be dangerous. The high dose estrogen treatment has never been used on a child this young and therefore there was no guarantee that it wouldn't harm Ashley and put her life at risk. 

The article was very effective in letting the readers decide for themselves whether or not the treatment given to Ashley was ethically correct. It was not biased, and did not lean toward any particular side of the controversial topic. I have not been able to form a decision on whether or not Ashley's treatment was ethical but morally I found it was wrong. Yes, there was consent from her parents since Ashley is not 18 yet and yes, the doctors did a lot of research before doing the procedure to see if it was harmful in any way, but the treatment violated Ashley's human rights. She may not be able to make the decision for herself but that does not make it right that the parents speak about her as if she is an object to bring along to places. I felt that the treatment was done out of convenience for the parents and by removing parts of her body the doctors and parents took away Ashley's self identity.