Propaganda

Language manipulation is a very powerful tool for many people.  It can be used for persuasion, media, propaganda, or even for daily life.  We saw one piece of propaganda that really caught my eye.  It was a poster of what seemed like an average town that was being shadowed by a large hand wearing a sleeve with a communist logo and a statement that read, "Is this tomorrow".  I thought this was very powerful because it brought a real world example to a real issue.  It was probably made when the cold war was still going on which brought a fear of nuclear war and soviet invasion.  The hand symbolizes the soviet union taking over the United States and world.  This use of appeal to fear creates a piece that catches people's eye because it affects something they love or them directly.  Fear is a good tool to use because it creates something that catches people's attention and makes them think about life and their choices in life.  Overall, this piece was very effective in getting the point across that the Soviet Union and communism are a direct threat to American life.

Language Nuances

In the article, "Words don't Mean what they Mean", by Steven Pinker, it analyzes the subtle nuances that are used in our daily lives to try to influence or manipulate our peers.  It analyzes the differences between certain words or phrases in different situations.  For example, when sitting at a dinner table people don't just say, "gimme the salt", rather they say, "Do you think you could pass the salt", as per the article.  This is especially prevalent in the political arena when speaking about a conflict in a serious situation.  Being clear but not giving much information provides the general public and audience enough information not to question it, and not enough information to raise any alarms.  When speaking about opposition, people and news media sources tend to pinpoint specific examples to make certain people or things look bad.  This is very popular in totalitarian regimes attempting to paint an enemy as evil.  They will only show certain stories and block others as well as use specific language to allow the audience to make their own judgments with only biased material to base it off of.  This is a very useful strategy to promote a viewpoint without many finding the rooting cause of the violence and bias.  This use of propaganda was very prevalent in the Nazi and Japanese empires during World War 2 targeting the Jews and other minority groups.  It is also happening in North Korea and other government controlled media sources such as Iran.  These language nuances provide people with easy ways to communicate effectively on a position with their peers.

Critique of "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

Gloria Anzadula wrote "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" to provide an insight into what she felt growing up as a minority in an English speaking community.  She provides an interesting argument that states that non English speakers create their own language in order to express themselves.  While this is an interesting argument, it provides very little logical and reasonable evidence.  She uses a very emotional tone in her attempt to persuade the reader on her argument.  She was trying to create a very raw recollection of her story and how she grew up but sometimes her tone came off as harsh and unprofessional.  She consistently belittles the English speaking people for not understanding her and fails to look at their side of the perspective when recounting her stories of her childhood.  She also fails to provide any logical reasoning to make the reader understand what she went through.  When she says, "the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they've created", it makes her seem very unreasonable and her argument too far gone.  Her evidence that she provides is very limited and not relevant to what she is arguing.  She provides a background on how the different dialects of Spanish came as a result of colonization from other powers.  While this is interesting, it provides nothing to her argument in terms of persuasion.  Her emotional approach is interesting for developing an argument, but emotions aren't very important in getting people to understand the argument and what the writer is attempting to prove.  This is where Gloria Anzadula fails in creating something worthwhile to read.