Your Private Language example essay topic

Baldwin bases his arguments on Black English on being valid and legitimate but not seen as a justifiable language because to political superior ities it its not correct. He argues of how language is political, because depending on what society speaks or who is in power, that is what the rest of the community will have to speak. It is basically which dominant group has the power of authority. He argues that language reveals the speaker, meaning that language makes you a part of who you are, your identity. As like Baldwin, Rodriguez has certain aspects of his essay that agree and compare with each other.

Baldwin for the most part agrees and extends Rodriguez notion that their private language is something that separates them from other people and unifies them with their own kind. Their language gives them an identity, but an identity that is controlled by a hierarchy that puts them in a minority group and not in a dominant group, all because of a political power. Baldwin says that language is a political instrument that is used to give someone a private identity that connects to your self, but as well can makes you separate from who you are or from the larger dominant group that's in superiority to minorities. He says language develops from history and from whom the history is about or it has effected. Language is developed by the speaker to recognize where they come from. The language tells people where the person comes from, their culture and their originality.

A language that someone develops gives them a sense of pride and an identity. A quote in Baldwin says, "The price for this is the acceptance, and achievement, of one's temporal identity". (Pg. 123) What he means is that the price for having an identity, is to learn and build up your language skills. Rodriguez's essay is very similar to Baldwin's essay when it comes to the notion that using your private language is not allowed in the school system and in public, but that the public language is to be learned because the political society that is in control says that is mandatory. Like in Rodriguez's essay he says, "It is not possible for a child-any child-ever to use his family's language in school.

Not to understand this is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize the nature of intimate life-a family's language". This is one of the quotes that Rodriguez uses that compares to Baldwin's argument about children being required to learn proper English and not use the English or other languages that they know. Baldwin says, "A child cannot be taught by anyone whose, demands essentially, is that the child repudiate his experience, and all that gives him sustenance... ". (Pg. 125). Children's language cannot be taken away, according to Baldwin, but can be forgotten.

That is what both authors say, although later on Rodriguez later says to be in this country you have to learn in school is English. Rodriguez argues the same thing that Baldwin says on people and children being forced to learn English. Baldwin says", What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right-and the obligation-to speak the language of lose gringos". These two quotes form a comparison that illustrates learning English is a must and something you need in order to communicate.