Introduction to Close Reading Rhetorical Analysis
The close reading process of a rhetorical analysis includes breaking down an essay into different parts in order to create a certain affect towards the reader. In the article, “Should Writer’s Use They Own,” Young uses diverse language to address the idea of code meshing.
Young’s rhetorical appeal in the article intersect with my reading experiences by creating a difficult read, that makes me want to take the time to identify the author’s key points within the article. The article presents two different positions in the issue, whether students should be allowed to use their native language while writing papers for school. The slang words Young uses help capture my attention throughout the article. As the article goes back and forth presenting both Fish’s and Young’s arguments, which make it difficult to keep track of who has better arguments.
It is difficult to clearly the article because the article is targeted towards professors. Interacting with diverse language includes breaking down a written paper into sections in order to identify the author’s overall purpose. Throughout, my reading process of the article, I was able to see my capability of reading difficult text.
The Active Reading Process
The active reading process begins with the act of annotation.
The act of annotating helps the reader break down the paper in order to make it easier to understand the author’s overall intent. The process of annotation can be done in many ways. I annotated Young’s article by adding notes and comments on sides of the paper to me identify key points within the article. In my process of actively reading Young’s article, I annotated the article by highlighting phrases, which I thought were key points to help me identify the overall purpose of the article.
I also made side notes that help me identify whose argument was being stated. When highlighting, I used two different highlighters to distinguish Young’s and Fish’s arguments. My annotation process of the article was similar to my previous annotating processes of other articles as I used to same tactic of highlighting key points and making side notes on the sides of the paper. As a reader I believe that the annotation process never changes, but the only difference is that some articles may be much harder to annotate or require a longer time to doAfter annotating the article I predicted that the author’s overall argument within the article is whether writers should use their own language when writing. He discusses whether students should have a right to their own native language when writing or whether one’s native language makes one vulnerable to prejudice. The key argument is stated in the title of the argument and highlighted throughout the paper as Young presents his stance on the issue and rebuttals claims of the opposing side that Fish makes.
Fish’s states that one’s language can make one vulnerable to prejudice as he uses the example of a person getting fired for not being able to speak English. Young opposes the argument and states that language shouldn’t be an issue everyone should be open to other people’s native languages. He suggests that we should try to learn other languages in order to communicate better, but then opposes Fish’s argument by presenting the idea of code meshing, which can be an alternative for people to use. Code meshing would allow people to bend languages when writing.
The Close Reading Process while Reading Young
The close reading process includes choosing quotes that one believes highlight the main ideas of the paper.
While reading the article I choose four passages from the article that I believed defined the overall purpose of the article. Fish says, “When folks don’t get no jobs or get fired or whatever cuz they talk and write Asian or black or with an Applachian accent or sound like whatever aint the status quo,” (110) which shows that he believes that people make themselves targets to racism because they don’t know how to write or speak English correctly. Fish presents the idea of people being vulnerable to prejudice when people don’t know how to speak English without struggling. He also states that, “Multicultural” should be thrilled to leave they own dialect and learn another one, the one he promote,” (111) in which he emphasizes his overall position in the issue, that others should not be allowed to use their own English because they should make an effort to learn a new language that will benefit them. Young then opposes his statement by saying, “Yet, even folks with good jobs in the corporate world dont follow no standard English…What we need to do is enlarge our perspective about what good writin is and how good writin can look at work, at home, and at school,” (111-112) presenting his stance on the issue as he proposes that instead of forcing others to perfect their English why shouldn’t be just enlarge our own perspective because not even those who have good jobs speak English perfectly Young argues Fish’s argument of forcing others to perfect their English by stating that many people that speak English don’t master all the rules of language even with numerous years of studying. He states that even professors of universities that teach others don’t speak and write in Standard English, so why others who don’t have the same education be forced to perfect their own English.
Young then proposes an alternative to the issue by presenting the idea of code meshing, “It’s blendin two or mo dialects, languages, or rhetorical forms into one sentence, on paper…it’s multidialectalism and pluralingualism in one speech art,” (114). The idea of code meshing is a solution to those who have trouble dominating Standard English. Code meshing allows them to be able to use their native language while blending it with English. Code meshing can also be used as a rhetorical style of culture when writing. I interacted with the statements Young made in the article over why code meshing should be allowed because English is not my first language and I remember how much I struggled in the process of learning it.
Learn a new language takes time and practice. Even with the many years of education that I have taken, I still struggle sometime with some words and find it easier to say the words in SpanishWhen Fish stated that many people get fired from the jobs or don’t get a job because they don’t speak Standard English it hit home. My mom always says, “Aunque a veces me canso de mi trabajo, no es fácil decir ya me voy porque para encontrar otra trabajo sería muy difícil porque no se el English bien,” which means that she can’t easily walk out of her job and look for another one because she can’t speak English fluently. I feel that is important for us, those whose first language is not English, to have a right in expressing our native language, but we do also need to learn how to dominate English.
My prediction after closely reading the article was that Young wants code meshing to be allowed and wants us to be more open to other people’s languages. In order to make sure I understood the author’s purpose I reread the article a couple times until I clearly understand what was being said by Young. The passages I choose while annotating were key points to both sides of the argument from Fish and Young that highlighted the overall purpose of the article. My experiences with reading difficult text contributes to my understanding of the difficult passages as I go back and try to break down the passage into parts by writing notes on the sides of the paper and make connections to other points stated within the article. The Rhetorical Analyze of Young’s ArticleThe author’s situation includes arguing towards why students should be allowed to code meshing, while opposing Fish’s arguments. Ashanti Young is an Associate Professor of African American Studies and English.
He has written papers in the subjects of: African American gender & racial performance, code meshing in education, Rhetorical & sociolinguistics, and critical creative nonfiction in race, gender and language. Young’s background shows that he has a strong passion for code meshing and racial performance. I believed he was motivated to write this article after reviewing Fish statements on what colleges should teach regarding people’s own patterns of language and was inspired to take a position on the issue as he argues for the idea of students to have the right to code mesh. Stanley Fish is an American literary theorist and legal scholar, who has taught at numerous Universities and is opposed in the article by Young. He is viewed as someone that is being a major influence in the development of reader-response theory. Since both authors have been professors they are passionate about how their students should be taught.
The author’s intend audiences in the article are other professors or college students. This article targets college students because some of them could benefit from the idea of code meshing or could fall behind as they no longer have that extra push to dominate Standard English. The language used in the article implies that perhaps this article is targeted more towards professors because it’s difficult to read. The author’s language has an effect towards the argument as it makes it easier for the reader to detect the author’s overall stance on the argument.
His choice on the effective academic audience made it quite difficult to read and understand but also encouraged me to break down the text in order to understand the article clearly.
Conclusion
Through the process of reading difficult text with diverse language I learned that I’m capable of reading any sort of text with the help of annotation. Annotating difficult text can help me break down and discover what the key points of the paper are. The author’s language choice adds favor to the paper just as Young mentioned within his article.
Diverse language in academic writing makes it quite difficult for some people to understand what is being said because they don’t understand the second language being used by the writer. Diverse language makes the paper more interesting to read as it encourages the reader to discover the author’s main purpose by closely analyzing the article. I found Young’s idea of code meshing credible to be used in work or home, but at school I believe we should at least try to learn a new language that would benefit us. Even though it may be hard for some of us to dominate a new language using our own language to replace certain words we don’t understand in that particular language will not help us learn.
Using our own language when writing can benefit us we are trying to capture the attention of a certain audience. I would only be motivated to experiment in code meshing when writing a personal essay or a letter to someone. The active reading process of Young’s article has encouraged to me to read more articles that include code meshing.
