Travel through English 1100 with Yumna

When we were asked to define “language politics” in the beginning of the semester, I had no idea how to address this question. I took the phrase at face-value and just thought of it as politics when it came to language. However, this was a very vague definition that I came up with since language has several aspects to it. With thorough class discussion and analysis of the texts, “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes, “If Black English…” by James Baldwin, and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, I became better informed on what language politics is. I learnt that language politics meant that people get treated very differently (oppressed or empowered) when they speak in a way that’s different from the “standard” english^[1]. For example, in “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan’s mother was treated poorly at her doctor’s office because she spoke with an accent, something not “normal” to native english speakers.

This understanding of language politics allowed me to reflect and come up with my own story when it came to my relationship with language. The spoken language and literacy narrative assignment allowed me to become more exposed to the struggles a lot of first generation students face when it comes to the internal and external conflicts faced with feeling “at home” with a language. For example, a good portion of my peers explained how they didn’t feel “Spanish enough” in their hispanic community, or American enough in “American” environments.

Paragraph charting my language and literacy essay helped improve the organization of my essay and keeping essays concise.  For example, in my first draft, the first paragraph set the scene where my great grandma had finished making a dress.  Then, the second paragraph went into talking about the history of India, something completely unrelated to my narrative. I realized this through paragraph charting and how my paragraphs’ purpose didn’t quite flow. Thus, I rearranged my essay and focused more on the language aspect of India and how it related to my grandmother not knowing the language of the new town she moved to. My peers and feedback from Professor Drori made me realize what I needed to move around, delete, or explain more throughout the essay.  Ever since the first paragraph charting exercise, I broke down my paragraphs in all my assignments, definitely helping my essays become more organized and concise.

Before the rhetorical analysis assignment, I had the assumption that rhetorical analysis could only be written in the form of a persuasive essay. Class discussion helped me redefine what rhetorical analysis meant as well as having a sheet of “Rhetorical Analysis Strategies”.  We took class time to look at examples of memes, poems, op-eds, personal narratives, and newspaper articles in which rhetorical analysis strategies were implemented. For instance, Amy Tan’s personal narrative used narrating, comparing & contrasting, and defining throughout “Mother Tongue” to get her argument across that people with “imperfect” English shouldn’t be treated differently.

I implemented the rhetorical analysis strategies and genre variation into my own assignment, using comparing & contrasting, narrating, and describing a process in the form of an op-ed to argue if one can hate the language they speak.  In the beginning, I still struggled with the definition of rhetorical analysis, where I thought I must use evidence and statistics to get my point across.  I compared and contrasted the history of Native Americans and German speakers as examples of people hating the language they speak, but this argument wasn’t very strong.  After getting inspiration from my peers through the spoken part of the assignment and feedback from professor Drori, I realized I can use narrating and describing a moment in which I hated the language I spoke to get a stronger point across. Since this argument was written in favor of my opinion, I decided to format it in an “op-ed” genre.

The research essay assignment was definitely the most challenging, but also most fulfilling essay in this course. I began with little to no knowledge on what a research paper encompassed, how to find scholarly sources, and how to create MLA citations. Prior to this course, I was only exposed to scientific research papers, which explained studies with scientific data to address a question.  After breaking down the sample research essay Professor Drori shared with the class, I learned that English research papers address a question (similar to scientific research), but half is a summary of other scholarly sources to back up your answer and the other half is your explanation/ thoughts of those sources.

Class discussion on how to find scholarly sources really helped my writing process. For example, prior to our lesson, I was using google scholar to find scholarly articles on Muslims’ interpretations of Rafa.  Google scholar had no articles on this topic.  Then, I looked at the CCNY online library database with separate “subjects” on religion, psychology, anthropology, etc. The sections helped in locating scholarly articles of my interest, as I looked into the religion subject section to locate scholarly articles. This also helped in overcoming the fear of bias in my paper because I hold a specific interpretation of Rafa. In addition to using the Quran as a source, I was able to find two scholarly articles on a different Muslim perspective on the interpretation of Rafa. Using the database (which I never used before), I also found newspaper articles on Muslim persecution in Pakistan and videos on sermons given by imams which I was able to use and summarize in my research paper.

Having my peers review my research paper helped me figure out where I needed to insert footnotes, as some terms in my paper were unclear at first, such as “Ahmadi Muslims” and “Rafa” (the word my research paper was on).

Finally, I wrapped up my paper with my works cited page, where I used Professor Drori’s guidance on how to cite different sources in MLA format in a research paper. I learned that you don’t need to cite yourself in a research paper if you are giving a personal anecdote. For example, I cited myself as (Ahmed, 2022) after writing about a family member that was persecuted due to having a different interpretation of Rafa, but learned that this wasn’t necessary.

In conclusion, English 1100 taught me language politics, strategies to improve my writing, and various genres in rhetorical analysis. I applied this knowledge to each following assignment, as I learned and grew as a writer from my mistakes made on prior assignments.

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^[1] English seen as normal by the majority of your environment