Paper #2 Assignment: Colonial English, due Friday, April 14th!

Paper #2: Colonial English

INTRO: V.S. Naipaul notes that for Ganesh, “It was a strain for him to talk correctly, and the woman noted, with obvious satisfaction, that he was moving his lips silently before every sentence, as though he were mumbling a prayer” (114). He only becomes aware of his ‘colonial’ English when he has to play the role of a proper guru, one that sounds learned, as if he had read thousands upon thousands of books. However, even though he has heard this English before, and probably learned it in school, it isn’t natural to him. The language that he grew up speaking was different, both in sound and in syntax, and merely adopting another English isn’t quite as easy as it seems—as this passage proves.

PROMPT: I want you to write a paper about your own personal ‘English.’ This isn’t something most of us think a lot about, at least not until it’s brought to our attention by someone who speaks differently—or thinks we do! Discuss how you became aware of your own unique dialect of English, and what it means for you to speak this way. Do you take pride in it? Are you ever embarrassed by it? Whom do you identify with because of it? What groups or people welcome you simply because of your language, and which ones might not? What words and phrases are unique to your culture/area, and might not be used or understood by others? You might also think how you picked it up, and especially if you moved around as a child, which ones you were exposed to, and which ones you kept.

REQUIREMENTS: While writing your own personal history with ‘English,’ I want you to find someone out in the world who you identify with because of their language. It should be someone we might know or could see in the media, etc., so that we could hear them, too. Explain why you recognize their English and how it makes you feel you share the same culture. What do they do that you recognize and you do yourself? And do you want to emulate them even more—speak like them, pronounce words this way, etc? Or is it something you want to get away from, and they merely remind you of your secret linguistic ‘shame’?

ALSO: You must quote some passage from The Mystic Masseur to support your ideas and discussion about language and culture. Be sure to explain where the passage comes from, what’s going on, and what the passage means. Just throwing in a quote without context that doesn’t make sense probably won’t be very convincing.

NO PAGE LIMIT—that’s up to you. Be creative and think about how language reflects who you are, how others see you, who you were taught to be, and maybe, who you strive to be.

DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 14^th BY 5pm