This is something I wrote last year for a school project. We were given a long list of prompts and then were told to first pick a topic, and then to research it extensively, and finally, write a commentary on our topic. A commentary differs from a essay in that while essays are full of facts proving someone else's ideas, a commentary proves your own ideas. The prompt I chose was "words are power". So, here is the essay.
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I can teach you to bottle fame, brew glory, and even, put a stopper on death”. While Professor Severus Snape did not say this in specific reference to words, he could have. Words can effectively make people immortal and famous. 400 years after Shakespeare lived, we still teach and republish his works. Did you know that he introduced 3000 new words into the English language? After writing 38 plays and multiple sonnets, Shakespeare became immortal. Did you know that there used to be more than 32 different languages present in BC? They were worldly renowned for their complexity, and as a result, the multiple aboriginal cultures were varied and complex. "How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong look like right" (Black Hawk, Sauk). Ever been thoroughly confused after listening to a politician? Ever noticed how they make good policies look bad and bad look good? Words, and by extension language, have the power to manipulate feelings, and to destroy a culture or create it.
FEMINIST THEORY OF LANGUAGE The feminist revolution used words as a tool to re-engineer gender inequalities. Part of the revolution was changing words like "fireman" to "firefighter". "After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?" (Russell Hoban b. 1925). There is psycholinguistic evidence that when terms such as "mankind" and "salesman" are used, we unconsciously start to associate those professions with men, because of the male pronoun. The annotations in our brains are that only men can do those jobs. One of the main contributions of feminism is the recognition of the power of words to shape how we think and what we believe. Feminists used this idea of the power of language to turn words into a tool for social change.
THE POWER OF STEREOTYPES IN LANGUAGE Stereotypes are present in every language and culture and they invisibly influence how we think of certain ethnic groups. Forever in our minds will the Roma, or "Gypsies" be linked to traveling caravans, long brightly colored skirts and palm reading. The opera Carmen is a prime example of stereotypes about The Roma. Carmen, a dark haired, flashy woman, burns through men and "love" like no one else. The stereotype of "Gypsies" as lazy thieves is embedded in our culture and we call them the cultural equivalent of calling the Inuit "Eskimos". The name "Gypsy" originally was given to the Romani people because it was believed that they came from Egypt. However, they actually came from India, and their name for themselves was The Roma. Our use of cultural stereotypes shape how we see people and what we believe about them.
ESCAPISM AND FANTASY LITERATURE "Manipulation" is usually seen as being negative, but it can be benign and actually amusing. Manipulation of the senses is a wonderful thing, perhaps that is why so many of us enjoy the fantasy genre, or something called escapism. We like being transported far from this world to another dimension with other rules. The vessels of this magic are the language and the sentence structure that the author has chosen to use. For instance, the difference between descriptive language and a lack of imagery is illustrated by following two sentences. "Upon the south side of the lawn there stood the mightiest of all the trees; it's great smooth bole gleamed like gray silk, and up it towered, until it's first branches, far above, opened their huge limbs under shadowy clouds of leaves" (The Lord of the Rings). Compare this rich imagery to "On the south side of the lawn there was the biggest tree; it's bark was smooth and it's trunk extended far up before there were any branches." Without descriptive words, the quote is flat and doesn't carry us with it in our imagination. Fantasy literature is engaging because the specific words that the author chooses have the power to captivate our imagination and transport our thoughts.
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE In cultures without written language spoken language--the oral traditions--were the key to cultural longevity. This was true for the First Nations in Canada. Understandably, when this cultural glue of language is removed, whole communities and cultures disappear.
From the late nineteenth century to the 1960's, First Nations children in Canada were taken against their will to government sanctioned Christian residential schools. There, they were forced to wear uniforms, and were ordered to speak only English. If the children were caught speaking their native language, they were punished.
The purpose of the Residential Schools was forced assimilation, very strongly forced assimilation. Along with English being the mandatory spoken language, the First Nations were taught Christianity and European culture. The First Nations' culture and beliefs were ridiculed and treated as inferior. Research shows that the children who went to residential schools and then visited home, stopped helping their family, and hung out with other children who also went to the residential schools. These children forgot their language and culture.
This lack of culture and grounding in community created a breach in the knowledge base in First Nations communities. Parents could not pass down their oral histories, or sacred knowledge to children who hated their own culture, couldn’t speak their own language, or didn't want to learn anything about a culture that was “inferior”. Because of the residential schools, whole languages, and therefore cultures, have been lost. Loss of language destroys the roots that keep communities healthy and bind them together. Because their languages were lost, cultural understanding and links to the past are gone.
Indigenous peoples across the world are currently faced with a crisis of cultural definition and community health that, while not solely arising from their loss of language, is closely tied to it. This crisis permeates many aspects of their life and is linked to the decay of public health, poverty, and the instability of families and communities.
HOW A LANGUAGE DEFINED A NATION The role of language as the creator of culture is perhaps more subtle in history. A significant example of language creating a new culture was the battle between Hebrew and Yiddish in the year leading up to 1948 when the Zionists needed to choose a language for their new state of Israel. Israel needed a national language that would unite the conglomerate of cultures that made up it’s population. There were people from Africa, the Middle East and Europe. What one language would make them all one people, with one national identity? Hebrew was the one language familiar to the majority of the immigrants, who were mostly Jews fleeing persecution. Hebrew was the one language that had no political ties, or belonged specifically to one country. On the other hand, Yiddish, though many more Jews spoke it as a first language, was seen as the language of the ghetto, of exile, and oppression. It was also only the language of Jews of eastern European descent, not those from anywhere else. After Hebrew was chosen for Israel’s national language, adjustments were made to allow for modern words, such as "car". Once Israel had a language, she developed a culture and an identity built around it.
CONCLUSION Ever hear the phrase "History is written by the victors"? Well, it's true. Not only that, but "Language is the archives of history" (Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882). No surprise then that groups who lost their language lost their culture, or that The Bayeux Tapestry, showing the Battle of Hastings from the Normans' point of view, was made famous by the victors. If the Normans had lost the Battle of Hastings, we would not be learning about the Bayeux Tapestry in schools today. If Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo, he would be hailed as a "good guy". Instead, the rest of Europe won that particular battle, and Napoleon has gone down in history as a tyrannical dictator. History is written by the victors--in their words.
Throughout history, conquerors have shared a common trait: they destroy libraries. Libraries are places where records of a culture's history are kept. Destroying the library destroys the history, with a consequent loss of culture. In 1981, the Tamil library was burned down in Sri Lanka. The library was a symbol of cultural identity to the Tamils, a culture that treasured it's literature. According to a CBC interview with a Tamil who was a university student there at the time, the Tamils felt like their entire identity was under attack. The burning of the library was organized and executed by the Sri Lankan government and police as an act of cultural genocide. This event was one of the first of many violent confrontations between the Tamils and the Sri Lankan government.
Language is alive. Every single language in the world is dynamic and evolving, if not, it's dieing. Words and grammatical rules that were mandatory 20 years ago are now considered unnecessary. An example is the rule about prepositions at the end of sentences. For instance "That's the store we're going to" vs. "That's the store to which we're going". No one uses the second sentence (except for my dad) in casual speech anymore, in fact, it has gotten to the point where it sounds wrong. "For last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice" (T.S. Eliot 1888-1965). Interesting writing will always the best of traditions with new ideas and language. There is a reason old books are often less captivating--because the language spoken today is different than when the book was written. For words to be their most powerful and work their best magic, they need to fit how the reader or listener understands the language. The true realm of genius is in writers, like Shakespeare, whose writing transcends time and culture.
ut trees). Also, since Lasqueti is an Island, there is usually an ocean breeze somewhere close by. And if not, the ocean itself is a five-minute walk away. Oh, and Lasqueti doesn't get crowded. Our closest full-time Lasquetian neighbors are a 20-minute walk away from us. So, no surprise we often retreat to Lasqueti for most of the summer. To find out more about this wonderful island go to: http://www.lasqueti.ca/home .
a "Rolling Clinic". Rolling is when the boat tips, and instead of getting out of the boat, you (in theory) right yourself and the boat with a combo of upper-body strength, a hip-flick, and complex paddle maneuvers. Remember, this is all accomplished while you are hanging upside down in dark cold water. Since this is one of the more challenging kayaking safety skills, we (in our lesson) spent the whole time with preparatory exercises for rolling. With the idea that “Practice makes Perfect” in my mind, I spent the next weekend on Lasqueti practicing my "pre-rolling exercises" in the hopes that one day, maybe, I will be able to do a complete roll. ☺
studies interactions between the climate and the ocean. For more info see http://www.rem.sfu.ca/COPElab/index.html . I am helping with a variety of laboratory tasks, some of which are extremely tedious and others slightly less so. I type up data from published papers onto an Excel spreadsheet—so that is easily accessible for further analysis. When that highly monotonous task becomes unbearable, I can either identify or weigh foraminifera (known to their close friends as “forams”).
