Mary Seacole's Memoir (thats is not me)

The text is a memoir from the autobiography, ‘The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole’. As the text type reveals, Mary Seacole’s memoir aims to reflect on her experiences in Jamaica in the 1850’s while the yellow fever epidemic was spreading. The text aims to draw people who are interested in Mary Seacole’s life and views or could be a historian wanting to know more about experiences of the yellow fever in Jamaica. The purpose is to showcase what Mary Seacole’s experiences were in Jamaica and how she lost people to the epidemic whom she dearly loved.

The author, Mary Seacole coveys many ideas throughout her memoir about the  yellow fever, a man she grew to love, a mother-son relationship with his friend who she grew fond of and cared for. The author conveys other ideas where people “have drawn their last painful breath like heroes, striking at their foe to the last, robbing him of his victory, and making their defeat a triumph. In this sentence she talks about normal people fighting like ‘warriors’ to overcome the yellow fever such that the epidemic’s victory (death) over them was robbed of and the triumph was with the victims. She also talks about the experiences of a mother-son relationship between her and a light-hearted joyous man who after some time died from yellow fever.

In the second paragraph she says, “I do not willingly care to dwell upon scenes of suffering and death, but it is which such scenes that my life’s experience has made me most familiar.” Through that sentence she is showing her hesitation to talk about “scenes of suffering and gloom” and hence for the rest of the text, Mary Seacole takes up a sympathetic tone and makes the mood of the text gloomy and sad. The mood also fluctuates within the paragraphs from when she says “I have now and then accompanied a little distance on their way into the valley of shadow of death” to when she says “Death is always terrible -- no one needs to be afraid of it” which changes it to a relieving tone rather than a sad one.

This memoir, by definition, takes a rather personal perspective of what her experiences were with the people affected by yellow fever. The use of pronouns like ‘I’ and ‘he’ proves the first person experience and hence her personal viewpoints. The memoir has a very good flow with ideas attaching to each other in a very structured way. The sad tone of the memoir raises the interest to read more of that text……….

WT1- First draft.

Rationale

Tupac Shakur’s life has been full of controversies. He expresses himself and the community as a whole through his music which is written in AAVE hence proving his identity as an African American rapper/artist. Because he expresses his identity through using AAVE words in his music, doing an interview would be best because it will be more interactive and the use of words in AAVE will make the interview authentic and legitimate. The interview will also feature real life words Tupac has used in the past.

The interviewing company will be MTV and therefore the interviewer will be asking Tupac on news heard of him in the general public like gossips, rumors, etc. and will ask him specific questions from a linguistic point of view, talking about his culture and thug life and how it impacted his music. The interviewer will be a black person for the fact that the intimacy between them would encourage Tupac to talk more freely.

 The intended audience for this interview is the young aspiring rapping community trying to gain inspiration from Tupac and wanting to know what he feels about his community and how his experiences and his dialect (AAVE) have helped him create creative rhymes while using meaningful sentences all the time. The purpose is to inform the American community about how Tupac’s dialect, the community he was raised, and the discrimination towards black people influenced his music.

 I aim to bring out how Tupac Shakur’s language and the community that he lived in affected his music and identity. This was a time where the rap music industry was at its peak and there was great competition between rivals from the east and the west coast. Tupac Shakur was the most highly rated rap artist of the time drawing thousands of fans, black and white, eventually increasing the number of enemies in the industry. I also aim to bring the most out of what he speaks like using his dialect, the African American Vernacular English, which he uses to express his feelings of anger, hate, disgust, remorse and faith to the American community; what he thinks about racism, poverty, blacks being the majority in the prisons, ‘thug life’ and his own life experiences. This text will provide insight into many of these aspects but will mainly talk about how Tupac Shakur’s music originated from his dialect and how it had a good effect on the community.  

 

An Interview with Tupac Shakur

We see a lot of ‘changes’ nowadays with technology, music, automobiles and many other fields. But, there is a group of people who believe otherwise, maybe a side we haven’t considered yet. Today on MTV, we have an artist who is in the forefront of this movement. He has inspired the black community with his deep and meaningful music. You know who I am talking about: Please welcome Tupac Shakur!

Interviewer: Welcome to our show Tupac. It’s so exciting to have you here!

Tupac: Hey, what’s happening?

Interviewer: What do you mean, you are! Your music is what is happening in America right now.

Tupac: Thanks. I appreciate it. I dedicate my success to all my homies back in the hood and all my niggas: Snoop, Ray, B.I.G, Suke, and Death Row for bailing me out of jail. Without them, there is no 2Pac, just a plain old nigga in the dark streets of Baltimore; you know what I’m saying.

Interviewer: Certainly; you seem a lot more humble than the last interview you were in….. Why is that? Any specific reason for the change?

Tupac: It’s simple. I’m a man who likes to take the lead and right now I think humble should be the new way of looking attractive, hahaha, I mean it’s like you know one of those things that you gotta do.

Interviewer: Interesting… How was your time in prison? There were rumors spreading around that you were writing a lot of music. How much of that is true?

Tupac: Simply put I was writing nothing there. Trust me, prison does give you time alone, but it kills your drive, it really did kill my music. I don’t know about the others, but you can’t find inspiration in a penitentiary. All you see is your homies suffering for a crime they haven’t committed and that’s what really revs me up. I just recorded a song on racism. It will be out soon… This is gonna blast everyone outta their houses. Damn, it’s gonna be a good one!

Interviewer: Do you mean ‘Changes’? I’ve got a copy right here and the audio recording with the mix.

Tupac: Nah, how did you get that paper? These homies are unpredictable; you know what i’m sayin. It’s like they upto something every single time you turn your back onto them.

I would like to talk to you about this song. It is very interesting. But let’s hear it right now for the first time on MTV.

Come on come on
I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I ask myself,
"Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?"
I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.
My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.
Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare.
First ship 'em dope and let 'em deal to brothers.
Give 'em guns, step back, and watch 'em kill each other.
"It's time to fight back", that's what Huey said.
2 shots in the dark now Huey's dead.
I got love for my brother, but we can never go nowhere
unless we share with each other. We gotta start makin' changes.
Learn to see me as a brother 'stead of 2 distant strangers.
And that's how it's supposed to be.
How can the Devil take a brother if he's close to me?
I'd love to go back to when we played as kids
but things changed, and that's the way it is

[Bridge w/ changing ad libs]
Come on come on
That's just the way it is
Things'll never be the same
That's just the way it is
aww yeah
[Repeat]

I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races we under.
I wonder what it takes to make this one better place...
let's erase the wasted.
Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right.
'Cause both black and white are smokin' crack tonight.
And only time we chill is when we kill each other.
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other.
And although it seems heaven sent,
we ain't ready to see a black President, uhh.
It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact...
the penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks.
But some things will never change.
Try to show another way, but they stayin' in the dope game.
Now tell me what's a mother to do?
Bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you.
You gotta operate the easy way.
"I made a G today" But you made it in a sleazy way.
Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid,"
Well hey, well that's the way it is.

[Bridge]

[Talking:]
We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.

And still I see no changes. Can't a brother get a little peace?
There's war on the streets and the war in the Middle East.
Instead of war on poverty,
they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.
And I ain't never did a crime I ain't have to do.
But now I'm back with the facts givin' 'em back to you.
Don't let 'em jack you up, back you up, crack you up and pimp smack you up.
You gotta learn to hold ya own.
They get jealous when they see ya with ya mobile phone.
But tell the cops they can't touch this.
I don't trust this, when they try to rush I bust this.
That's the sound of my tool. You say it ain't cool, but mama didn't raise no fool.
And as long as I stay black, I gotta stay strapped and I never get to lay back.
'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the payback.
Some buck that I roughed up way back... comin' back after all these years.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. That's the way it is. uhh

Interviewer: Damn! That’s some good rhymes Tupac!

Tupac: Ah thanks, I poured it out from my heart, my soul. This song is for real, it is the real deal. Do you feel that vibe?

Interviewer: I certainly do. Now, let’s talk about the lyrics of this song. How much of this is actually true?

Tupac: It’s all true. Everything I said in that song has been part of some of my life’s episodes. Most people don’t know this, but only the main idea of slavery was abolished. Even in these times where everything is becoming so ‘digitalized’, racism against blacks still exist. I mean tell me this, what’s the ratio of blacks to whites in a prison; might be about 5:1 or something. It’s crazy how black people get randomly convicted for wrong and absurd reasons. I use my language to voice what’s happening out there and my identity as a black person has inspired me to use this language that we have acquired, to its full effectiveness.

Interviewer: Indeed, looking at this song though, one part has really got me thinking. It’s this, ‘You gotta operate the easy way.
"I made a G today" But you made it in a sleazy way.
Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid,"
Well hey, well that's the way it is.’

What does this mean?

Tupac: The world out there is dark and cruel and unless we have our unity and unless we don’t get our cultural values back none of us are gonna be left in this world to tell our grandchildren these stories. The fact of the matter is we are living in poor times, the blacks I mean. People are trying to make ends meet and little black kids are getting influenced by drugs, money and violence; you know what I’m saying. A new trend that has popped up is selling drugs to kids. Back in my time, people who helped me were drug dealers, pimps and many other people who are considered to be horrible. They took me in as a real brother and never told me to sell drugs or anything bad.

Interviewer: Then why do you think you see no changes?

Tupac: Hahaha, I think you misinterpreted me. What I meant was there were no changes being seen from the white communities’ attitudes towards blacks. I mean they are trying to keep us oppressed. We all know the blacks will emerge and walk with equal rights as the white man in the years to come.

Interviewer: Tell me more about your life… This is getting interesting. How did your language help you write music? And how did it affect your life.

Tupac: Our language, the English we speak, was made for rap and hip-hop. All those rhymes you can pick up just from everyday sentences. The way we talk also has a rhythm. Our language has also helped me improvise the term ‘nigger’ to ‘nigga’ which now means never ignorant getting goals accomplished. Such is the power of our language, me and my homies use it to educate people, we make them realize.

Interviewer: Any last words to the young aspiring rap community before you leave?

Tupac: Always remember to keep it real. Educate and don’t use rap to promote violence. Peace! You got that?

Audience: Yeah!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TXTIN- TBH, I DUNNO WAT DA BIG FUZ IZ OL BOUT!!!!

Texting has been one of the main ways of communicating and staying 'in touch' with friends, colleagues, and even our families. It has affected us in many ways including lack of a greater attention span, a decrease in face to face conversations and one of the more famously debated impacts, the decline in the use of the 'proper' or conventional words of the English language.

Let's look at two very different and interesting perspectives and explanations of this topic, that is 'Does texting have a positive or negative impact on the English language?' These research supported theories are of two linguists generally known in the world, well, at least one of them is. David Crystal and John McWhorter(???). Even though they convey the same message, I found John McWhorter's theory more relatable and interesting to hear. No offense to David Crystal (maybe a little) but his commentary of a poem to me was kind of boring because it had a lot of repetitions and I was like, 'Whoa! I get the point dude!!' Ok now back to the topic. This is a comparison of what both linguists are saying about the impact of texting on language.

John McWhorter

McWhorter believes that texting is not writing at all?!?! He believes that texting is a miraculous new way of communicating in actual speech through a piece of technology. Isn't that great? Think about it. When you speak, do you look back into your mind and articulate what you are about to say?  Of course you do when you speak formally but do you articulate when you speak casually, for example with friends? Don't you follow the same principle for texting? So these are the questions McWhorter was exploring when he spoke. Research has shown that people speak casually, at an average, 7- 10 words per sentence.

What he says is that language is speech and not writing. He asks us that if we could speak like we would write, why couldn't it be possible to write like we speak. Seems fair enough right? This is exactly what texting is. Writing like you speak... He also describes texting as 'fingered speech'. Very well articulated and it makes complete sense because you type with your fingers on a piece of technology like an iPad or iPod the same way you would speak casually. This new language, he says, has new structures being formed through continuous evolution. An example of this is the changing of 'lol'- laughing out loud to 'lol'- an expression of empathy and accommodation: lol I have to do this blog, for example. According to linguists 'lol' is a pragmatic particle like Yo! in AAVE or 'ne' in Japanese.

What McWhorter's theory suggests is that the youth is creating a whole new language from English just like French from Latin! Isn't that great!!! A whole new language... WOW. He says that we are experiencing a linguistic miracle right under our noses.

David Crystal

The famous English linguist, David Crystal, doesn't talk much about evolution of the language but rather talks about how using abbreviations in texting is basically to save time and to accommodate the character limits available for a tweet or a text message. He believes that the youth has become very advanced in the language and is kind of doing a balancing act between academic English and social English, which is pretty amusing! He calls texting with abbreviations 'Textspeak' and is characterized by its 'distinctive graphology'. Am I even supposed to know what that means? Do you know it? Leave it in comments please! Anyways, he talks about how something radical has taken place and explores the fact that texting has brought up 'a much more wide-ranging and innovative set of conventions after which he also states that 'textspeak' has its own range of direct address items'. In his commentary, the part I didn't like was his random expansions of abbreviations which was repeated over and over again which all condenses to state that abbreviations can be expressed in many different ways in different circumstances and with different people. For example, CYA can either mean 'see you' or 'cover your ass'. An interesting abbreviation I saw was ROTFLMAOTIME, but who in the whole wide world would say that anyways. I certainly wouldn't and that is for the sole reason that he says we don't do it because it's not cool. However, it's expansion is 'rolling on the floor laughing my ass off with tears in my eyes'? WOW. I would rather say LMFAO and no, I am not going to expand on that in anyway whatsoever.

In conclusion, he says that abbreviation has ergonomic value and that text messaging dialects are already evolving but also states that its too soon to actually predict the future of this new found language and if it might turn into an actual language like French, maybe. He thinks that its a new literary genre with idiosyncrasies which will eventually be accepted in the society on a large scale. I do like how he ends his commentary though: 'It (Textspeak) is the latest manifestation of the human ability- and young human ability, at that- to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings'. He also states that it is a language in evolution. Ok fine I take back what I said that he doesn't talk about evolution.......

The two linguists had almost similar interpretations of how texting might affect language and if it has had a positive or negative impact.

Similarities:

I think we can all agree that they think it may as well have a positive impact on language for the fact that a new language could be evolved from texting. They also believe that new words have been created and have evolved from its original meaning throughout such a short span. Basically all their ideas are similar if you think about it.

Differences:

The only actual difference I found was that David Crystal was amused by abbreviations (seeing that he writes a lot about it) and McWhorter doesn't seem to be so amused. Maybe it's the generation gap.........

Interesting......................... hmmm (not actually thinking):

http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h79V_qUp91M

More blogs coming up on Language and Me. Do me a favor, and could you please write any other similarities or differences you observed? Thanks and it is much appreciated!















 

The 'Burqa' controversy

The following is a fictitious letter, in response to the article 'Dear Lady Gaga, burqa sends the wrong message'. It is also important to notice that the name of the writer is fictional and its not my name.

The Burqa, a religious symbol, should not be worn as a seductive costume.

Fatima Noor
August 20, 2013

Dear Editor,

I am writing this letter to thank you for the effort you made in putting up this article. I really liked the way you articulated your sentences to actually have an impact on the readers. It was really convincing and I had to write this to you.

The burqa as you may know has great significance in the Islamic culture and religion. Women wear it to conceal themselves, to avoid people judging them by their looks and to liberate themselves from unwelcome male advances. Lady Gaga disappointed and discouraged those young fans of hers and literally turned the burqa into a seductive costume which actually welcomes sexual advances but rather she should have portrayed it in the opposite way. This shows that she has no understanding whatsoever about the Islamic religion and she has also therefore culturally appropriated the burqa and expressed it by her own interpretation of what women feel like wearing it. Actually, Muslim women are proud to wear the hijab because they won't be judged by their appearances and in turn they experience equity.

I also agree with you when saying that the signs of refusal would, like in the video, give messages to men to seduce you when that is not what the meaning was at all. Also a man ripping of her burqa to fulfill her sexual fantasies gives the wrong message to those men out there and it could result in all kinds of horrifying crimes. The world is not nice and we wear the burqa to avoid the horrible side of the world. The interpretation of GAGA was indeed insulting and appalling and she should consider apologizing.  I also totally agree with you on many other aspects, actually all that you have said about this controversy. About how wearing a hijab  liberates you from conforming to society's standards of beauty and how the hijab doesn't prevent you from doing anything you like. This is all true. People have this mentality that Muslim women are being forced to wear the Hijab but the fact is that they take pride in wearing it.

Thank you again for this wonderful and persuasive article. It was a joy to read and I will make sure I follow you in your next articles.

Fatima Noor

FYI: no offense of any kind intended