Talking Points #2

Richard Rodriguez: "Aria"

Premise:

~ Spanish
~ English
~ bilingualism
~ children
~ language
~ classroom language
~ home language
~ conversation
~ family
~ education

Argument:

Richard Rodriguez argues that each person has two separate individualities; they have their personal individuality and their public individuality.

Evidence:

1. "What they seem not to recognize is that, as a socially disadvantaged child, I considered Spanish to be a private language." (34)

2. "What they understood was that I needed to speak a public language. So their voices would search me out, asking me questions." (34)

3. "They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such as assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality."

Other Stuff:

I really enjoyed reading this article. It alot easier that past articles that we have had to read. I really liked how it was a first-hand account of Richard Rodriguez's life and how he had to assimilate into the American culture and language. This made it more and more interesting to read. It took me a little while to get into it, but as soon as I read, "Because I wrongly imagined that Englishwas intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intinsically private one, I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language of home," (34) I knew I wanted to continue to read. That sentence just seemed to draw me into the article.