Although it is often argued that the popularity of past social justice movements has instigated social change, the demand for radical social change thrives through the 21st century. However, change continues to face the barrier of biased language and misinformation. While popular movements such as the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Decolonization movement gain momentum through social awareness and […]
Sociology Class My favorite class so far is probably my sociology class. I find the subject to be immensely interesting and easy to connect with. In the past whenever I wrote about social issues I had usually connected them to personal experiences in order to prove it was something relevant and real. Sociology had been connected to writing merely anecdotes […]
A Reflection on a Past Science Class An instance where I had deeply considered what and how I was writing had been last semester during a mandatory science class. I had difficulty writing the essays even though I thought I had understood the material. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand that I should’ve been writing depending on how the teacher taught the […]
In “Hers,” Maylor argues that language and reality are shaped by a social agreement on the meaning of words. More specifically, society gives meaning to words through generational change and reclaiming of words. For example, she discusses the differences of the N-word used by the black community versus the white community and how it is that the meaning and connotation […]
In her article “Says Who? Teaching and Questioning the Rules of Grammar,” Anne Curzan argues that teachers ought to teach students to question the grammatical rules of standard English. More specifically, students should learn the reason behind the way they are taught to write in order to learn to utilize language in different contexts. For example, Curzan writes about the […]
In “Getting Rid of the Appearance-Reality Distinction,” Richard Rorty argues that it is language that allows humanity to acquire information and be knowledgeable. More specifically, knowledge is not possible without having language which stems from the imagination being able to create words that are socially effective. For example, he writes,” expressions like “gravity” and “inalienable human rights” should not be […]
In “The Assumptions of White Privilege and What we can do About It,” Massingale discusses their realization of white privilege in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. He covers the differences in people of color making up the majority of “essential workers,” forced to put their lives on the line, versus their white counterparts […]
In “Legal Arguments,” Fish argues that legal arguments are simply the construction of a new truth under the existing evidence. More specifically, legal teams build a narrative of the truth in order to advocate for their client. For example, lawyers may utilize their framing of the case in order to create action from words or vice versa in order to […]
In “Academic Arguments,” Fish argues that academic arguments there are non-written bounds that are shaped by the communities in which they reside. More specifically, there are unspoken rules inside of groups of people in which those participating and have a form of credibility within the group must follow. For example, for historians, there lives an unspoken rule against holocaust denial […]
In Teaching to Transgress, Bell Hook argues that language is a form of intimacy that aids in overcoming oppression and allows for the expression of human experience. More specifically, Hook analyzes the relation between black vernacular English and its relation to the line “This is the oppressor’s language yet I need it to talk to you” from “The Burning of […]
