Introduction: When thinking about learning a foreign language people always think of the mainstream languages, French, Spanish, German, but what about Greenlandic? “Death by Monoculture” by Stephen Pax Leonard is about how globalization and consumerism is slowly getting rid of some cultures and languages. However according to Leonard the internet might help save these cultures and languages. This article was effective because it was understandable and to the point, Leonard did not go off on tangents and used statistics and facts in order to help the reader understand.
Summary: In the beginning of the article, Leonard is talking about how people are losing their cultures and languages due to phones and TV. “Technology, be it mobile phones, …show more content…
Leonard is an anthropological linguist. He has done a lot of fieldwork in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. “Death by Monoculture” mentions his time in Greenland visiting the Polar Eskimos, which is the group of people he wrote the article about.Visiting this group of people personally let him experience their way of life and also see first hand how technology has changed their culture and how it is affecting their language as well. Therefore Leonard is knowledgeable enough to write this article and is a good source.
Logic:
As expected from a linguist Leonard is very good with words and wrote his article in a very logical way that was easy to understand. Leonards points are all very organized and do not jump around; he builds each argument off of the one before it. For example, talking about how most devices have 50 language options and then segueing into how many Polar Eskimos do not watch television or text in their native language; they usually use either Danish or …show more content…
“Not that there is any chance of the Polar Eskimos listening to Beethoven, they are too busy indulging in virtual reality Playstation war games whose only poetic content is ‘fucking pacify him’” (Leonard 148). In the last paragraph the author is talking about the beauty of language and how “a language is a collection of statements about the world delivered in a multitude of voices set to a background of music” (Leonard 147), and about how each language is special and how being fluent in a language other than your own is not the same as being able to speak it. After all of this hopeful beautiful commentary on language Leonard makes the comment about the Polar Eskimos, sure it might have gotten a little chuckle out of some people but it is a very depressing comment about modern day consumerism and
Summary: In the beginning of the article, Leonard is talking about how people are losing their cultures and languages due to phones and TV. “Technology, be it mobile phones, …show more content…
Leonard is an anthropological linguist. He has done a lot of fieldwork in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. “Death by Monoculture” mentions his time in Greenland visiting the Polar Eskimos, which is the group of people he wrote the article about.Visiting this group of people personally let him experience their way of life and also see first hand how technology has changed their culture and how it is affecting their language as well. Therefore Leonard is knowledgeable enough to write this article and is a good source.
Logic:
As expected from a linguist Leonard is very good with words and wrote his article in a very logical way that was easy to understand. Leonards points are all very organized and do not jump around; he builds each argument off of the one before it. For example, talking about how most devices have 50 language options and then segueing into how many Polar Eskimos do not watch television or text in their native language; they usually use either Danish or …show more content…
“Not that there is any chance of the Polar Eskimos listening to Beethoven, they are too busy indulging in virtual reality Playstation war games whose only poetic content is ‘fucking pacify him’” (Leonard 148). In the last paragraph the author is talking about the beauty of language and how “a language is a collection of statements about the world delivered in a multitude of voices set to a background of music” (Leonard 147), and about how each language is special and how being fluent in a language other than your own is not the same as being able to speak it. After all of this hopeful beautiful commentary on language Leonard makes the comment about the Polar Eskimos, sure it might have gotten a little chuckle out of some people but it is a very depressing comment about modern day consumerism and