BILINGUALISM

This paper argues the issue of bilingualism with the analysis of three different articles and one film which is related to this issue. The first article is “RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN: WHAT ARE THE DRAWBACKS?” by C. Bosemark, the second article is “BILINGUAL EDUCATION SENDS WRONG MESSAGE” by H. Netkin. The third article is “ARIA” by Richard Rodriguez. The film which is related to this issue is “TORTILLA SOUP” by Maria Ripoll.

The article by C. Bosemark mentions the drawbacks of bilingualism. The controversy is whether raising bilingual children is an easy thing for parents or whether it causes children to fall behind their precocious ones or not. It also discusses the effect of bilingualism on child’s communication with others. This is a controversial issue which divides the people into groups. Some people say that raising bilingual children is useful for both the children and their parents whereas some people argue that there are drawbacks and these drawbacks may hinder the child’s upbringing.

The purpose of the writer for writing this article is to inform public about the issue of bilingualism and attract their attention to that controversy. Also, by collecting all the data about this issue, she is trying to trigger them to think about the topic and discuss the controversy by examining all the sides and effects of it, warts and all. Then with regarding all the things that are being discussed, coming to a conclusion that is beneficial for both the parents and their children. She is talking about the benefits of being bilingual under the title of drawbacks.

The author of this article is specifically addressing the parents who are planning to raise bilingual children. Also parents who are expecting a baby and do not know anything about this issue of bilingualism can be the target of the author. These people are the primary target of the author. Also, people who are interested in this topic, trying to enhance their knowledge about the bilingual child rearing can be the secondary target of the author. Moreover, there are people who are raising bilingual children and have some problems with their children’s communication skills. Those people can find some useful information about their problems and try to shape their paths according to what they conclude from the article. They may notice that being bilingual does not mean to have problems in communication skills. Because in this article, writer clarifies that although a bilingual child may speak later then the monolingual children, it will speak soon or later. So we should not worry about it.

When we come to the order of ideas in the article, we can see that everything is in the correct order. There is no jumping between topics. Everything is clear cut. Firstly, she introduces the topic with a personal experience. Then, she continues with the introduction of the opposite side. When she completes the explanation of different aspects of the topic, she asks a question to the audience, she says “… So, that all sounds well and good, but what are the real drawbacks?” After asking this question, she tries to answer it with the categorization of the drawbacks, their explanations and the examples.

The author of this article uses many strategies to reach the audience and affect their thoughts. She also uses these strategies deliberately to change the ideas of her audience who are strictly against to her opinion. The first one is the ethical appeal. In the introduction part, she uses her personal experience on this issue to reach her audience’s ethos. She says “I speak Swedish and my husband’s native language is English. When we had our two children, we had no doubt that we wanted to raise them with equal access to both languages. Now, years later, when I have made promoting multilingual child raising not just my avocation, but my vocation as well…” With this kind of an introduction, she tries to gain the respect and the trust of her audience. Because with this introduction, she tries to imply that she has experienced it herself so, she has the knowledge about it from the fist hand.

 Also she takes the opposite side’s views into account and gives a place to them in her article as well. By considering the opposite ideas, she uses again the ethical appeal to reach her audience’s ethos. For example, she says “… But rest assured, even if your child did not walk at nine months, eventually he ended up walking just as well as those precocious ones.” With this kind of a richness of ideas, she proves that she is an open minded person like an author should be. She believes herself and counts on the reality of her ideas to the extent that she can even share the ideas of opposite sides with her audiences in her article.

She also uses logical appeal to reach the minds’ of her audiences. She uses a lot of reasoning. For example she says “Although there is no solid scientific evidence to suggest a delay in speech, anecdotally there is a real sense among parents that multilinguals start talking three to six month later than monolingual children. If you think about it, it makes sense that a child learning two or more language systems take more time, since they are actually learning twice as many words.” Here she makes reasoning. With the help of this kind of logical reasoning, she tries to gain the respect of her audience and tries to make them believe much more in what she is talking about. Because this kind of logical reasoning makes them feel more close to the issue in terms of thinking.

But in the sentence given above, a logical fallacy exists. Because as she said, there is no scientific evidence to prove that a delay in speech occurs when a child exposes to more than one language. It lacks of enough evidence. So, this statement results in a logical fallacy.

She also uses emotional appeal to reach the hearts’ of her audiences. Through the emotional appeal strategy, she tries to touch to the pathos of her audiences. For example, at the end of the article, she says “… the appreciation from your child as usual, is probably another 20 years out.” With this statement, she tries to imply that when you do that, you will gain appreciation from your child. I think even the thought of gaining this appreciation from your child is enough for you to take an action. Also at the very beginning, she meets the audience with a very stunning and powerful introduction in terms of emotion that will be evoked in the audiences. She shares a personal experience with her audience. I think this kind of an introduction helps the audiences feel more comfortable and feel much closer to the writer. With the help of these strategies, she achieves her aim. She accomplishes to meet the expectations of her audiences.

The article “Bilingual education sends wrong message” by H. Netkin discusses the affect of bilingualism on the education. Whether bilingualism is useful in education or not is the controversy of this article. It is a controversial issue because it divides the people into groups. While some of them support the Bilingual education, the others are strictly against it.

At the beginning of the article, writer talks about proposition 227 by Ron Unz. He introduces this proposition. After that, he starts to talk about the restoration system that is planned to be done for the healing of education problems resulting from the proposition 227 that outlawed the bilingual education and replaced it with English immersion.

The purpose of the author for writing this article is to inform the people about the issue of bilingualism and its effects on the education. He wants people to be close to that issue. Because it is about the education and the education is the basis of all the things that lead the countries to the level of high development. In this article, the hot topic is whether bilingualism is effective in the education or not. He also wants Latino immigrant parents to take action towards the discrimination issue that sees Latino children less intelligent than the others.

The audience of this article is probably Latino immigrants who are facing this problem of language in education. Also, people who are in charge with the education issues and people who are experiencing the same problem in their school lives can be the audience of this article. Teachers and the parents are also the primary audience of this article, because they are responsible for the children’s education. Those people are the primary target of the author. Also immigrants, who have to attend to a school in the country where they settle, can be the primary audience of this article. Moreover, people who are highly interested in the education issues can be the secondary audience of the author.

When we look at the order of the ideas, we can see that the writer achieved it really very well. He organized his ideas in a stunning order throughout the article. Firstly, he introduced the proposition. Then, he continues with the reaction against it. Then he starts to explain his personal experiences on the issue. He gives ideas of experts on that topic. Then he makes the final of the article with the ideas of another expert’s and compares it with his own experience.

The writer of the article uses some strategies to reach the audience easily, to affect them with some proper techniques. Firstly he introduces his personal experience to the audience. He says “I am a son of immigrant parents, my native language is Yiddish. As a child entering school, I quickly became proficient in English language without the “benefit” of bilingual education…” By saying that, he can easily achieve his goal and affect the audience and make them feel more close to himself. Also, when people read that article, because of the personal experience part, they will think that this person is not talking nonsense. He has the knowledge and the experience about the issue. So they will have no trouble in relying on him. He achieves to affect people through reaching their ethos by this personal experience part. We can also consider it as another strategy that aims to reach people’s hearts through emotional appeal. When people read this part, they will feel themselves much closer to the author. He achieves to reach their pathos by that way. Towards to the end of the article, he introduces a person who is expert on this issue, Ruben Zacarias. He is the former Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent. The writer uses his ideas to affect the audience. Because Zacarias is a person who has a high level of knowledge about this bilingualism in schools issue. When author shares the ideas of that person with the audience, it means that the author has done a lot of research and has the knowledge on the issue. And also, when writer uses the name of an expert, it gives the audience a sense of trust for himself and his article. He again uses the ethical appeal to reach the ethos of the audience.

He also uses logical appeal to affect the audience in thinking and reasoning. He gives some percentages about the immigrants who are living in the East Los Angeles. He says “The ethnic demographics in the East Los Angeles District of Boyle Heights at that time was made up of approximately 40% first and second generation Jewish immigrants, 40% first and second generation Latino children of Mexican descent, and 20% combination of Black, Asian and others.” By using these percentages, he tries to reach the logos of the audience, to affect them logically. The other appeal that the writer uses explicitly is the emotional appeal. He says “How American children would fare if they were put in schools in China not knowing anything about the Chinese language — drawing a parallel to Spanish speaking children entering American schools without knowing the English language.” With this statement, writer tries to affect the audience emotionally; he tries to reach their hearts by using emotional strategies. This result in the audience’s feeling pity for the situation and get emotionally involved in the process. So, the writer can gain support from the audiences by affecting them emotionally.

This article uses all the strategies quite well to affect the audience. It can achieve its goal to change people’s opinions about the issue.

The third article is “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez. This article is like a diary, in an informal language. The writer of the article is a son of a Mexican immigrant family. He is writing this article like talking to the audience directly with his use of private speeches and his use of an informal language.

The writer of this article writes his article for the purpose of provoking people to take an action towards the discrimination of immigrants in the US. For example, he says that Mexican immigrants feel as if their native language was inferior to the English. With this kind of things, he feels himself distant from the America. He feels himself not belong to that society and its language. He isolates himself.

The audience of this article is immigrants who are living in the US and having those problems inside. Also, people from the other countries can be the target of that article because the writer of this article wants to achieve his goal of reaching more people and increasing their emotions of empathy towards those immigrant people who are having the same problems.

The writer of this article uses some strategies to affect the audience. For example, his use of informal language and his using narrative “I” all the time can appeal the audience’s pathos. Because when writer uses the language in that way, the audience will feel more intimate and closer to the author. Also, his first hand experience can serve as an ethical appeal. It appeals to the ethos of the audience. Because when he gives examples from his own life, as an experienced person on this subject, people will trust to him. By that way, the writer will gain credibility. And he uses comparison to establish the logos in the audience. He says “at the age of five, six, well past the time when most other children no longer easily notice the difference between the sounds uttered at home and words spoken in public, I had a different experience. I lived in a world magically compounded of sounds…” Here he makes a comparison of himself and the other children and tries to appeal to the logic and the reason of the audience. By that way, the things that are mentioned can become more meaningful for the audience. For short, this article accomplishes its aim of affecting the people with using proper strategies and techniques.

The Tortilla Soup, by Maria Ripoll is a film about a Mexican-American family. The father of the family is a semi-retired chef. His name is Martin Naranjo. He has three daughters with him and because his wife is dead, he raises his daughters, takes care of them. And these three girls have different personalities, different life styles.

At the beginning of the film, we can observe that father is very strict about the use of the language. He consistently warns his daughters about not to use Spanglish. He demands them to choose either Spanish or English. He is against the combination of two languages. Because he thinks that this will spoil the language.

 The spectator of this film is supposed to be anyone. But the people who are aware of the bilingualism issue of this film will be the special target of the film. It also choose people who are immigrants living in the America as the primary target of spectators in terms of bilingualism issue.

This film uses some strategies to reach the hearts’ of the spectators. For example, it uses ethical appeal to reach the ethos of the spectators by exemplifying the life of a family who is experiencing this issue. It is a Mexican- American family. And they face the same problem of the drawbacks of bilingualism in terms of spoiling the language.  It can also serve as emotional appeal. Also, when the father is with his work friends, he uses Spanish. Because he feels himself comfortable and happy. So, it can serve as an emotional appeal. Moreover, there is an order in the actions of the film. It does not jump between the topics or the events. Everything is tied to each other. Every event and every situation follows the previous one. Each one is the result of the previous one and the cause of the next one. So, there is a special technique used in the ordering of the actions. This strategy is the logical strategy. With the help of this strategy, the film does not make the minds of spectators perplexed. It achieves to reach the logos of the spectators.