Language Analysis
Overall Task & Goals
For this assignment, you will analyze the languages/codes you communicate with in your everyday life. The purpose of this assignment is to have you explore your multiple literacies through research methods. Your multiple literacies may include different languages, dialects, jargon, and slang you speak and write every day. You may write an email to a professor differently than you text your best friend. Maybe the way you speak at home is different than the way you write formal papers. Your science lab reports, English research papers, and Facebook status updates all use different types of writing and language that you switch in and out of depending on the context and audience.
In order to be able to analyze your language, you will need to find three different types of writing you have done. While two written resources will be entirely up to your choice, for example, an email, a text, a Facebook post, or a dairy entry, the last one must be your short reflection paper on the video “The Danger of a Single Story.”
This analysis is intended to make a statement about HOW and WHY YOU use these different modes and manners of communication. In other words, how and why you code switch? As you think about what to analyze, consider these questions: How did you acquire your codes or manners of communication? Then, you will need to analyze their significance. What do you notice about your codes? How are they different? What do the different codes or manners tell you about society, class, regions of the country, etc? Are any stigmas attached to any of your codes you use? What are the wonderful things about those codes? What do your codes tell you about yourself and your background?
You will explain and state your position on how and why you write the way you do in the different contexts. You should consider what challenges or benefits come with writing in the different codes or manners of communication and base your statement on the ways your code changes depending on various factors. This is not a statement about whether each dialect/language/code is good or bad, but rather an examination of the purpose and approach to using each one effectively for its specific audience and context.
Research Component
Much of what you are incorporating into your analysis should be from your own brain and from your own observations. However, to help you along, you are required to engage with two secondary research sources.
Secondary research:
- Two thoughtful (possibly academic) sources about language or code switching.
