BP 3

The readings from Trask, Gee, and Rath all connect from the concept of orality: communication that’s spoken or verbal; through different cultures and their languages.

From Trask’s “From a Native Daughter,” she expresses a sense of confusion or rather a divide from between her native tongue, language, and culture that was told from her parents ;and the westernized or colonized version that was told to her from her teachers in school. She couldn’t quite understand why there were so many different versions of her culture being represented and all throughout its because the colonization of the haoles came and degraded her native culture and it was because of this that her culture was misrepresented in textbooks when she went to school. Her native people were peaceful and lived in a society that had no conflict, war, or disease; but when Hawaii was colonized Hawaii became the opposite of what her parents told her: a place of feudalism-a social system that existed in medieval Europe in which people worked and fought for nobles who then gave them protection and land in return.

From Rath’s, “Hearing American History,” he expresses that the languages, traditions, and cultures of others have been misrepresented throughout history as generational stories get passed down but because of the influence of others there are key components that go missing and that knowledge is forgotten. Rath mentioned the importance of music in the African/African American community. First he mentions that Africans used music to show power, “record histories, and to provide legitimacy to rulers” and these musicals were even continued through slavery. But as slavery progressed the colonizers and slave owners didn’t want to see or hear their music and wanted the slaves to become nothing but overworked and beaten down laborers. But as years passed by, music in the African/ African American community became a popular commodity that is even expressed through todays’ modernized society. Because music became an important and integral part of the African community, it’s later colonized and westernized into something that is used to gain financial wealth and popularity.

From Gee’s “The Literacy Myth and The History of Literacy,” he expresses that because literacy was able to free the primitive cultures of the old fashioned ways of thinking; it caused chaos and strife. Literacy was seen a myth in primitive cultures because orality meant that everyone in the community had to have the same thoughts, views, and opinions. A kind of one single brain organism. But as literacy was introduced it widened the minds of others allowing them to become more logical, analytical, and better developed. Because language made humans humane, the idea of literacy civilized humans allowing them to become more intellectual.