La Lengua de los Chicanos

Wow! I did not realize how many different types of spanish there are although I did know that there are many (from what I have learned in my spanish classes). But I thought that there was just "proper" spanish and spanish not so "proper"spanish. From seeing how many different types of spanish there are I can understand how the spanish people have "conflict in discourses" within their own communities in the same way that we English speakers have. This was baffling to me because as someone who wants to become fluent in the spanish language, I wondered how could I ever? being that there are so many types of spanish. With that in mind I would think that for a spanish person trying to learn English it may be similarly difficult for him/her because of the many different types of Englishes there are.

More specifically to the article, I find it interesting that those spanish speakers who used their home language in school could get in trouble. Gloria Anzaldua recalls getting "licks on the knucles with a sharp ruler [after] being caught speaking Spanish at recess" in her article How to Tame a Wild Tounge (Anzaldua 37). I think one should never be punished for speaking in his/her native tounge but rather "validated" for speaking another language as Delpit suggests in her article The Policitics of Teaching Literate Discourse. I think overall that the chicano language and any other spanish dialect should be celebrated.

Conflict in Discourses

To begin I would like to say that I would definitely need to re-read "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction and What is Literacy?" by James Paul Gee to get the full understanding of the article because it included a lot of information and a lot of different points. But there was one thing that I found to be true although I thought the idea could have been explored more. Gee talks about how discourses can be in conflict. He says that "...some people experience more overt and direct conflicts between two or more of their Discourse than do others" (Gee, 628). I believe this is true because many people talk one way at home and then have to speak differently when in other settings (which is a topic that we have been exploring throughout the course).

Although I find this to be true, I do not like how Gee uses black people as an example of this. He says that "this is much less true of the primary Discourse in many lower socio-economic black homes, though this primary Discourse has influenced the secondary Discourse used in black churches" (Gee, 628). Whether or not this is true, even after re-reading the page I do not quite understand how he can justify this opinion and I wonder where he got this information to put this in his article. I think this idea would need to be further developed so that it doesn't come off as being racist. Gee also talks about "women academics [conflicting with] feminist Discourses" which without further explanation comes off as a bit sexist.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong or help me to understand what Gee is talking about!