Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Languages and Power
For my Languages and Power research essay I have decided to write it about the Russian culture within my community. The tea party sparked this idea in me because (being the optimist that I am) [Participle, I liked having it in my aside to show that it was a present action or state of being]I wanted to find some positive ways that assimilating to English has created. Reflecting on my time in high school many of my friends immigrated from Russia with their families. I always found it very fascinating that they were able to fluently speak both English and Russian. Their ability to jump back and forth between each culture surprised me. They did this almost effortlessly. Their community is so tight nit yet they are able to integrate into the cultures around them. But since I do have these views from being an outsider: I want to research my hypothesis. To do this I am going to research the background of the Russian culture in the United States (if anyone has an source suggestions please let me know). And then I am going to individually compose a set of questions to ask my Russian friends back home. Any suggestions for idea questions? After I have gathered my information I will then relate it back to who has the power. I have not thought about what types of world English I am going to use. I want to use my own but honestly my world English is very much similar to standard edited American English.
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Brooke,
ReplyDeleteI like your topic for your research project. I also lived in a heavily populated Russian community so it will be interesting to see your approach to the project. Some questions you could ask could be…
1. When you came to the US did you feel pressured to learn English?
2. Were you praised for being bilingual or discriminated against?
3. Were you ever told “speak English geez” when speaking Russian in the US?
4. Have you ever been discriminated against for being Russian?
5. Did you ever consider not learning English, or know anyone that refused to learn English and their struggle?
These are some of the questions that I used for my interview that could apply to anyone’s project I think. I’m kind of confused on your use of the participle. A participle is shown with “ing or ed” and I’m not seeing that in your highlighted example. I think somewhere else that might have worked better for a participle is “Integrating cultures, Russian speakers are able to switch from different cultures easily when it comes to language and lifestyle”. I know this isn’t a sentence that you have in your blog but I had trouble finding something that would work. I integrated your ideas into the sentence but constructed my own. I hope my questions and sentence structure helps!
Allyson