week 5 reading assignment

    "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence" is a food for thought, it also displayed many ugly truths in our society. Or on the other hand, it showed that we are progressing now. I also made mistake when I was young toward the local language due to the subjective and objective circumstances. 

    My father was a Chinese from mainland China, he traveled to Taiwan with the political party in 1938. During that time, Taiwan has just ended the Japanese colonization and became a new foothold for China military ( during that time, most soldiers would like to fight back when they prepared enough resources. It's the most simple explanation for China-Taiwan history and stance). Our government banned local language--Taiwanese due to the anxiety of being overthrown by Taiwanese if they plotted through their language. Not only in my family but also in school, the students would get punished when they spoke Taiwanese. 

     Ironically, my mother is a Taiwanese. She could speak Mandarin in front of us and chat with her family in Taiwanese. Most educated people know that, in Asia countries, we have been influenced by the patrilineal idea which means the women don't have a say in the family. And it yielded a very unreasonable outcome, even I am a female I also belittled my mom and even the language which my mom spoke. I had a stereotype against Taiwanese language, I didn't appreciate the beauty and even looked down on people speaking Taiwanese. The more trophies of speech contest I won, the stronger concept I formed, because one of the contest standards was the pronunciation correction. Until two years ago, one of my friends told me he did some research and found out Taiwanese could derive back to Shang(商)  Dynasty (3,500 years ago), and the language we use now, so-called Mandarin is much younger compared to Taiwanese. The finding shocked me and push me to ponder how long the bias I could hold and judged people by their languages. 

     According to the article, I reflect myself,  when we evaluate a language, why do I classify them into high-low section rather than equally different categories? Do I really want to hang out with friends who always caution wordings and try to maintain their reputations or can I accept some rude critics but from their heart?  Do I really know all of the languages? Do I know the speakers' historical background? Why couldn't Kpelle speakers make the free recall in first time but immediately catch up after demonstration? Why can't they have no idea about category?

    In the content, I also realized the well-trained interviewer is really crucial in a test. Like the scenario mentioned, the result could be so different if the interviewer could set a proper environment for the participants and elicited more-close-to-real responses. The imprudent conduct or arbitrary wrap-up could deviate our direction to perfect our world.

    No language is better than others, every language plays an significant role at some particular time in specific area. Some languages are still live but some are forgotten, but all of these wove the prosperous history.

Reference

1.     Santa Ana, Otto (editor): Tongue Tied: The lives of multilingual children in public education. Chapter 8. Lanhan, 2004. (ISBN: 0742523829)