this is the opening page to my digital portfolio for this class.

phase 2 paper

1. Mother tongue – Amy Tan

phase 3 paper

1.  L. L. Zamenhof, in a letter to Nikolai Borovko,1895

 2. Ulrich Ammon, University of düsseldorf population reference bureau, The Washington post, 2015 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/23/the-worlds-languages-in-7-maps-and-charts/

3. Marc Ettlinger, Vice news https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpvx4/why-humans-dont-have-a-universal-language

4. David G. Drubin, and Douglas R. Kellogg, English as the universal language of science: opportunities and challenges, ASCB MBOC, (scholarly) https://www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10.1091/mbc.e12-02-0108

John Burrowes RA Essay cover page

Amy Tan

Through this piece the main idea of showing the appeals to the rhetorical features present in this text. This meant appealing to logos, ethos, and pathos, this was done with a few quotes, lots of paraphrasing some explanations and a lot of looking back at the text. My audience are probably people who have already read the text so I assume either college students or those who enjoy studying english language. This means I can take some liberties with my grammatical choice such as choosing more difficult words instead of repeating. This also meant I did not have to pull any punches explaining the rhetorical features since they are fairly common knowledge to the audience demographic. This meant that all I have to do is state support and explain my rhetorical features and examples throughout the text instead of having a whole smorgasbord of things to explain and do. The meaningful insights I have gained going back over this is that the fourth rhetorical feature is used very little outside of magazines or speech as not to date an article unless it is specifically referring to the passing of time. I also gained insight into how to better express the remaining rhetorical features in a variety of ways including simply relating a scientific field to a subject in a meaningful way. This helped me gain a better footing on how to self identify an essay’s components or how it should be composed as a start. This will allow me to advance in writing in the future needing less of a flash of inspiration or simply a necessity to get it done being my sole motivating factor. This should help with my bad time management and abysmal scheduling skills (and hey while i’m at it it may improve my sleep schedule.) essentially this will help improve my scheduling and writing in the future in both ways as some issues emerge as well. The text having so many effective quotes really simplifies my job for this paper a good bit, this allows me to pull quotes or paraphrase easily without losing much. This can be both positive or detrimental though as it just gives too much fluff information at points that is not helpful or pointless. This ends up making it harder to skim through for quotes as the piece flows very well and it is easy to lose your place. The varieties of quotes also helped me to understand one of the course learning outcomes though. It helped me understand the exploration and analysis of various genre’s in reading, this is because the separate stories the author either paraphrases or quotes are useful in their own right and can even be considered to have different tonal roles if not genres. This means that it is much easier to do something such as see how different stories interact in the grand scheme of things. This will definitely help with my reading in the future if not essay writing alone. 

The essay “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan uses multiple rhetorical features to various extents and uses them to add to it’s point. Through this essay I aim to explain the use of these features throughout the paper and expand upon why they are used. Through this I also plan to give my interpretations and issues if there are any, with instances of these features. 

The Author refers to three of the four rhetorical features At some point in her essay the last rhetorical feature, kairos is essentially unimportant as these events are near universal based on time. She uses the remaining features to varying extents throughout the piece, she also uses an entire story quoted from her mother to express her point in the story, she has many quotes and paraphrases from her mother stated phonetically so as not to dull the point she is making. She also makes a point that the term ‘broken or fractured’ english should be changed or replaced. In her paper she also refers to socio-linguistics related to her speech with separate groups of people. She uses it to the extent of explaining why she talks differently with her friends than she talks with her husband or mother. She refers to her own opinions and thoughts on which she is speaking and reveals the reasons and back story as to why she is telling us this. This helps when we are trying to explain her position on these issues. 

The first feature I will  be speaking about is ethos, ethos is expressed through the essay mostly as reputation and experience. The reputation she uses is twofold as this piece came shortly after one of her works became very popular. 

She also states “I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language.” This adds to both her reputation and her experience. This information adds more to her reputation though, this is the last major application to establish reputation. Throughout the rest of the story though she mostly refers to experience, such examples of this include her verbatim retelling of her mothers story. 

 This story backs the differences between ‘different’ englishes and her credibility when she says “all the Englishes I grew up with”. She uses this to explain the ‘differences’ within english and how without meaning to there are essentially english dialects, she uses this with her relation to these in her childhood to show her as more experienced with these.  She also appeals to this exact same concept when she retells her story of her calling the stockbroker in New York City, only to act essentially as a translator between her mother and the stock broker. This story ended with her in New York watching her mother shout at that stock broker’s boss in ‘broken’ english. The experience through this is shown as her using her skillset to help and understand both sides while having a good bit of comedy at the end without her skills at play. These events add to her experience but after a few they keep lending themselves to the same point rendering such examples after a certain point moot. Another example likened to the last one but more serious appears which makes the same point cementing it but not adding another structural point to build upon. These events are not really elaborated on further so we are left with a reinforced point. 

This piece uses pathos extensively in two main parts, these applications to pathos are used to explain but also to try and convince us of a certain point. To this extent the first major point of pathos is when she is consciously realizing that she is using a ‘different english’ with her mother highlighting a certain phrase as an example and using it she elaborates that that has essentially turned into her ‘family’ english as she uses it with her mother and sometimes with her husband. This further expands into her explanation into a story using family talk which is not majorly important for pathos. The important part was her relating it to family and making it somewhat personal, as it seems like something any family could have. The second major application of pathos is when she speaks of her “mother tongue” this is in relation to her asking how well people understand her mother’s speech. She realizes and explains that it is hard for others but since she grew up with it, it is essentially a language she is fluent in. Further she states that she describes it as broken english but she comments “I wince when I say that” to help explain that in her opinion this english is not broken… just different. This can be an effective appeal because she well explains and this helps grow the empathy leading up to this point. 

With the last appeal being to logos and it appealing many times but for few reasons it will be fairly short. At multiple parts she looks to specific points relating to socio-linguistics and how her speech is broken up depending on what group she is talking to. Through this she appeals to social psychology as a basis for why there are these different englishes co-existing and also showing her understanding at the same time. She also shows this is not a simple understanding problem of english, she states that her mother reads and understands difficult pieces like forbes report and listens to wall street week. This shows her mother’s understanding of the written and spoken english language but the problem comes when commanding it into proper Americanized english. This appeal shows where the problems lay and this adds into the heavier explanation she gives on why the terms given to such english are not great. 

These three rhetorical features work together to make her appeals and struggles understanding, while not making it seem like a problem too alien to discuss for the layman. This helps put together a fairly persuasive combination between an informative and persuasive essay. With all this information laying out in front of me I would be lying if I said this did not affect my opinion on language at all. 

John Burrowes               WLLN PAPER

This paper is written for any interested in a part of my story but more majorly this essay is written to respond to the original prompt. The prompt posed by professor velez which constituted a description and explanation of a moment in time that affected your language or literacy. For this audience who would read such an event I used high level grammar matching a college vocabulary and used it to both explain my current literacy inwardly but using it outwardly to explain my event from back then. 

Through writing this piece and looking back i learned and remembered more of the events that affected me, how they affect me to this day, and how sometimes they can affect something completely different. In this way I learned more about myself and psychology by writing this paper than really learning about more phases of language and literacy. One such example I realized while writing this paper was that something only minorly related can be affected by an event like this. The example I can give of this is that after the event when I would write or answer questions I would do it as concise as possible and even sometimes answered with one word answers to prompts. 

Through my high school years, audiences and genres played a huge part in linguistics and writing, I do not find motivation to write about something I dislike to speak about. This was to the extent of me doing papers the day before class all in one sitting or just lazing around then writing a bad piece of work over like 2 hours. Basically knowing the right answer and answering it but without passion. Audience was also a major factor because if it was in class with people I knew i would speak a lot and answer questions. But if not I was near silent essentially never answering questions. 

In this piece I would say that I have achieved a better understanding of the course learning outcome “Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.” This is because I did not have much of an understanding on how to expand off of the original prompt. After having trouble with the prompt and writing very little I met with professor Velez and he explained how I should structure the essay and how it should be divided. I split up my paper into three main categories due to this help and it majorly assisted me in writing an essay which meets the criteria, as well as helping me become better acquainted with this type of review an its benefits. This was the major point but it was not the only as in another class I have we are also working on the social aspects of linguistics and these events have definitely helped me improve in both of these classes. 

My road towards growth in my language skills has been an interesting one. I have had help, struggles, problems and my fair share of outside experiences that helped me be the writer I am today. One of the many events that shaped me Is what I am talking about today, this one is one which negatively affected my experience. 

My event started the first day of 4th grade, it is quite a short event but it had a major effect on my writing. I walked into class, sat down and started talking to my friends for a short time, then the teacher handed out a writing assignment. Me and my friends discussed what we should write about, we then went back to our seats and wrote about the prompt. Next something you should know about me is how bad my handwriting is, it is completely abysmal. Then we all handed up our writing to the teacher and she began going over them in class. Then she got to mine, She started with an annoyed tone first calling out my handwriting for being a mess as well as Saying I was rushing just to get it done, and she said I was not even trying. All along with the tone of her voice rising. I promptly burst into tears to which she responded by continuing to yell, By the time she stopped yelling I was a mess and I just sat through class after that. I never got closure for this event though, this was because I soon after transferred out of that class into another. This meant I had such remarks swirling around my young adolescent brain with no closure, this was one of the decisive factors to the change and lack of confidence in my own writing. I began to hate writing with pen and paper and began to answer questions as shortly as possible Usually without even full sentences. This caused some problems and I slowly got accustomed to writing in full sentences and not just speeding through answering questions. I still have problems with writing papers too to the point and being under the word or page count with nothing more to add. While I was set back as a writer my reading and speaking were still improving vastly. I could read a paragraph and digest it much faster than most of the other students in class. I also answered very well in class when I would speak, I unlike with my writing would elaborate heavily with my speaking. One of my teachers commented that if I could just put my thoughts directly onto the paper I would have no problems with papers. My experience also led to another major flaw with my writing, I could not stand watching someone read my writings. I would break out into a cold sweat and feel as though I was burning up, and although I have not completely gotten over it I simply feel a minor discomfort with someone reading my writing now. 

Looking back on all of this today I feel strange, I feel like this majorly shaped me as a person but I am unsure if it is good or bad as this event pushed me onto the path I am on now. I made mistakes and I have had success since I have had miniscule trials and arduous journeys between then and now and I don’t know how to feel. This event helped me to write differently, I am not sure if it made me a better writer but it made me different, for the longest time my writing lacked emotion and was almost robotic and even now it is still a little stiff but I have changed grown and moved forward as best I can. I do find something a little funny about this though, the teacher mainly commented on my handwriting being bad (which it was) but it heavily affected my normal writing and typing to this day made me feel stressed about writing completely unrelated to it and allowed me to change. Today I also better understand the teacher and why she was like that but that does not make me sad or happy it just makes me feel a little empty. I used to be mad that that happened to me or sad that I was called out like that in class like that. 

Today my writing has improved but I still do have some major issues with it, on assignments such as this I still have a hard time getting up to the page count and I will write a few lines then realize I went way off topic (this is the third time rewriting this part). I still feel that I am improving and slowly becoming a better writer in the process. Today I feel regarding my speech though that I have atrophied a bit due to the ongoing global pandemic. I definitely could not have done this without assistance though, I was in a program that helped me Improve my writing heavily. I have definitely Improved over this time but sometimes I just feel like that little kid from back then, trying to string together words to make an introduction for a paper and being unsure of what to rewrite change and where to leave parts off. But most of the time now I feel self assured in my writing and as though that kid is just a small part of who I am now. 

I have not been sure of what path I am taking now or why this is the path I am on, I feel unsure and I question if I made the right choices. The quote “The best way to find out whether you’re on the right path? Stop looking at the path.” This quote by Marcus Buckingham I feel aligns with my current ability to judge my progress from that event now that I have have stopped to look back at It and my inability of judging my current path Is due to me not being able to see it from the perspective of an outsider, I can’t see what is going to happen, but because I am human and not looking at my path I feel happy with how this path is taking me. There is only one part of this quote I disagree with which will probably tell you about me more than anything else is that I think there is no ‘Right’ path. Different people have different paths that can lead to their happiness and I think there is more than one right choice. This event was definitely a changing point for me but for someone else this could have not affected them at all or even affected them much worse than me. 

All in all I feel that this event has majorly changed my interactions with the world of writing and literature as well as helped shape me into the person I am today in a way. There are definite changes I need to make and have yet to make yet but I will find a way with my right path and no one else’s. 

Phase 3 Researched Essay Cover letter

My audience was mainly aimed at someone who would be interested in the concept of a universal language which has a huge range so most of my language was fairly rudimentary but there were some points when I slipped and let myself use too difficult words. To appeal to this audience I appealed mainly to logos with minor appeals to pathos and kairos. 

Through this paper I have learned more about both the development of language and the issues with humanities development of language and it’s evolution. Through this I also learned about how both the lack of literacy and increase in popularity and accessibility of the internet quickened the speed language fragmented and evolved at. A practice I have gained from it is learning about different former slang vocabulary words that may be useful in expanding my vocabulary with my example this time being nother which means another as expected, but the word has died out in the past 200 years. 

In this paper mostly exigence has come to a head in damaging my quotes this time, this has damaged my quotes because for a large time period there was very little thought about such a topic and very modern demand for topics such as this is rare and interest is fleeting, so there is very little useful info or quotes. I am now also a little better now at looking for the exigence of a topic to get a better idea of what I’m going to find during research. 

For this paper course learning outcome was most aided, this was because I saw how the languages were categorized along with how many speakers they had divided up by native or secondary. This meant that I could much more clearly see the outlines of why a language such as English is one of the, if not most important languages in international politics and various other subjects. This paper also connects to the culture part of that course outcome in a way, this is due to the large relation between language of origin and culture similar to how most puns and jokes do not cross language lines well. 

John Burrowes Phase 3 paper

How would trying to integrate a universal language work out?

The concept of a universal language has been explored before and tried. There are many reasons why this was attempted and many reasons that it was less than successful. I plan to show the reasons why integrating a universal language would have many crippling issues. Through this essay I wish to elaborate why creating, spreading, and upkeep of a universal language would be very difficult although the usefulness of such a language. 

Firstly I would like to explore the history of universal languages. The first language I would like to mention is Latin, this is because Latin was a very widespread language in it’s own right during the roman empire but like all languages there were issues. Not everyone spoke it and there were always other languages, with another issue being how it splintered after the fall of Rome. This gives us some reason to believe that with a widespread language when speakers are separated into groups dialects are likely to form and they may grow and split into different languages. 

Then in the early 17th century the idea was thrown around and written about but there was very little progress made, but there were many comments on how it was the fool’s gold of the linguistic world. This was mainly due to the implementation of it to have to go against the inherent national language, and a government implementing something like this would have issues. One of these issues would be dissalusioning their work force when the language they are working in suddenly changes, this one thing would likely stop it but discounting those who would even teach them this. There would be many issues in getting teachers for a language (that likely doesn’t already exist). Short of saying there may be many issues with something like this. One of the things proposed to oppose this was having the language very easy or quick to learn. This has issues though as that would mean that this language would have little complexity or subtext and be almost robotic. 

The next language amends the issue of learning speed but has issues of it’s own, the next language I am talking about is one of the first IAL’s (International auxiliary language) to gather a following, Esperanto. Esperanto was a language made to be fairly easy to learn, taking only a few months to learn. It was made by L. L. Zamenhof to be a universal language for use by people and the international communities. Zamenof created the language because he saw conflict within his own community. “In Białystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies.”due to this he started developing his language to bring people together. The language gained some popularity but was suppressed because France thought it would displace French and English as the central international languages. There were also other issues which caused it to be less effective such as persecution of speakers by both the Soviets and Nazis during WWII. 

This brings us to the last ‘univeral’ language I will talk about, English, English is a universal language in a different way then any other that I have mentioned. As a universal language English is most affected by separate dialects and is almost splitting into different languages. The reason English can be looked at as a universal language is because of how it was spread globally by the British Empire and helped by how it has been a primary language used by the international community. It is also a self fulfilling prophecy in the way that it is still useful to be learned because of how many people learn or know it. This graph shows that in 2015 english was the most learned language by far, but english had about half a billion native speakers, this means that even though it is not spoken the most in the world it likely holds the most broad spread of speakers in the world. This means it could be a useful language to know wherever you are as there is about a 1/7 chance there is someone who knows at least a little bit of English. The flaw of dialects is very prevalent in a major sense for example if you took someone from the US and dropped them into rural Ireland they would think they were speaking nother language. 

These flaws tell us that to build a functional universal language there are many things that need to be accounted for and that a minor problem can cause it’s failure. This means we would likely either need a perfect storm to form a universal language or we may need a technological language for something like this. Along with this vein there are other reasons that a universal language would fail in various countries. The most major reason as to why it will not work on a community or cultural level is due to the idea that “The way you talk communicates a tremendous amount of things about who we are. Because we have separate identities, we have separate languages,”. This idea and explanation of identity based on language would give further reason why creating a universal language would be a herculean task. This also would add to the mounting tasks a need for it to be a language with very few native speakers due to most countries having rich language identity. These issues are so crippling to the creation and implementation of a universal language that it is nigh impossible that you would have to start talking about theoretical situations where a universal language could be implemented to be effective on the world stage. Reasons a world language would be most useful are for lessening tensions between countries, allowing anyone anywhere to converse with one another without a language barrier between the two of them, it would also be useful secondarily to musicians, politicians, and writers making it easier for their works or agenda’s to be spread due to no language barrier to stop or slow it. Along with articles about the sciences knowledge would also spread faster internationally. The current state of language in science is best put as “English is now used almost exclusively as the language of science.” This causes minor but also sometimes major issues due to English not being a true universal language but simply a universal language on one topic. This means that anything we would have to preserve such as writing scientific journals or other materials must be translated carefully and thoroughly to this new universal language causing issues all around. 

Through research I have seen that there are many reasons why there would be issues implementing a Universal language. I do believe a concept such as a universal language could theoretically work or work in theory but there are many issues with the process. The concept of a universal language has been explored and tried before but meeting with mostly failure. 

John Burrowes       Self assessment essay

How have I developed as a writer?

Throughout this semester and in this class my writing has seemed to improve as I worked on various papers. Through these papers and class I have had major growth toward some of the course learning outcomes. I plan to go over all of the course learning outcomes and outline the ones of which I have understood or have advanced in the most. 

For the first course learning outcome my last essay heavily relates to this with me toying with and explaining the concept of a global language and it’s issues. Through that paper I gained a lot of knowledge on languages, and especially why they are stronger even though they can have less speakers, and how they connect to culture and identity in a meaningful way. Through my last paper I also understood how languages can both be used to oppress others, and how languages themselves can be oppressed by governments and the world. The second course learning outcome is much more abstract and difficult to explain, so I have shown a variety of genres of writing, and through our readings this semester even more have been shown. Along with this I have expanded my understanding of rhetorical situations, such as by using them in constructing my purpose in writing or to extract the author’s purpose by taking it apart piece by piece. Within this concept I have also grown to understand the appeals better including me gaining a firmer grasp on logos and finally understanding kairos a bit.

This last course learning outcome for the first grouping is one I have not developed too much. This is because I have had problems with three of these steps, being collaborating, revising, and editing. Throughout my writing career as a writer in school I have been a good reader and drafter although I have had issues with procrastination in the not too distant past. This does not mean I have not grown during this class in the other categories, as the collaboration has helped to yield more effective central ideas and topic sentences. I also definitely was helped on by the personal meetings when they were done as I got a much clearer view of the aim of the paper and how to expose this well. Editing I have always had trouble with and likely always will as I am not a very patient at all, I always will have patience for other people so it is not regarding people but more a paper, book or other. my memory probably plays a part in this as well because I could never reread books since my memory was good enough where I wouldn’t be catching anything new. 

Regarding the first of these next three course learning outcomes I recognize rhetorical terms as their goal, and do not usually say something along the lines of recognizing that two sentences have similar starts reinforcing the idea of them, but I would not directly recognize it as alliteration. In gist I understand what the rhetorical terms are but unless it was a basic one I am unlikely to name it, on the other hand with rhetorical strategies I pick them up rather quickly but I expect most people to expand the strategy well and not keep it condensed. This flaw in my analysis of rhetorical strategy has caused errors and issues within my reading, but is not common within normal writing with mainly special examples and speeches. The second course learning outcome of this paragraph refers to collaboration and socialization in writing which again is something I have major issues with, my main issues with this are that I do not have patience in reading or writing, this stands to reason why I dislike revising my writing, and this directly translates to me now unlike in the past enjoying such social writing practices but having issues with implementation due to my nigh unwillingness to revise a paper. 

For the last of this paragraph’s course learning outcomes it is the Idea of using the internet and print to reach wider audiences, which I understand and do not take issue with but do have issues personally implementing. I do understand the use of these to spread correct and well sourced information but there are issues with these as well because a lot of stuff within the news is changed to be an eyegrabber. There are issues with these two mediums that are not easily counteractable but these publication methods can still be very effective. 

With the first course learning outcome of this paragraph being about sources there are a lot more accurate one’s today then there were 6-16 years ago. Along with this there are many ways to search for scholarly sources such as specialized search engines. Along with this huge influx of knowledge on the internet there are of course issues with mostly credibility and bias. There are some ‘credible’ sites that have had issues due to info they stated being false, and there was the evolution of some websites like wikipedia into what it is today. On the other hand bias affects basically anything you will see written and this can be unconscious or conscious as there will be bias issues with everything but pure data. The second course learning outcome of this paragraph is related to the integration between text and cited quotes to add to the paper. This course learning outcome is very important but at the same time is also essentially very basic. There is a very simplistic concept behind combining quotes that support your side and your persuasive text that helps to elevate an essay, but you do need to have a good way to do this and it is precise. The quote should be trimmed just long enough to get it’s point across or give context to support the main goal. 

Lastly this course learning outcome expands on the great need for effective and consistent citations which sounds very simple but can be complicated as I made many issues with. This foundation for any essay will definitely help as it is one of the tenets of our writing system as a whole. 

Through this paper I have expanded on how I have been affected by the course regarding the course learning outcomes and how my view on this is along with the changes they have had. This spread throughout the course has led to some major improvements in my writing along with some miniscule changes.