The purpose of this paper is to provide a mapping of Jane H. Hill’s argument in her article “Language, Race and White Public Space.” In order to effectively map the argument I will perform the following functions. Firstly, I will state what I feel are the author’s main claims in the article. I will define any key terms or concepts necessary to understand the claims. I will then demonstrate the connection between the claims and the kinds of evidence utilized by the author to support these claims. Based on any links between the claims and evidence I will demonstrate how they are linked together. That is in the conclusion of my mapping I will present the basic map of linked and overlapping parts that form the structure of this article. Specifically
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In her article, she examines a particular part of the White American discourse, Mock Spanish. Mock Spanish is defined as a form of racist discourse that involves the use of grammatically incorrect forms of Spanish by White people in a disrespectful fashion. She makes six claims that are related to support her overlaying argument. The first four claims Hill makes are very similar. All of these four claims deal with the relationship between the White public and historically Spanish speaking populations. These claims are established as follows: There exists a double standard of discourse for White people and Spanish speakers; White public use of Spanish is not standard, usually grammatically incorrect and occurs even at high levels of education; The function of Mock Spanish is to elevate Whiteness while at the same time it functions in the racialization of a subordinate group; Mock Spanish is a form of racist discourse in that it projects a racist image of Spanish Speakers through direct indexicality. For the fifth claim, Hill asserts the linguistic incorporation of Mock Spanish occurs with other languages too, creating White “homogeneous heterogeneity”, but not to the same degree as it occurs with Mock Spanish. Her sixth and final claim is that findings in other anthropological studies and the phenomena of “crossing”, which refers to the use of …show more content…
Many of the claims Hill makes in her article are backed up by indirect ethnographic evidence and also direct ethnographic evidence. Many of the claims are centered on an idea that there exists a “White Public space,” an area of public life where being a White English speaker is normative but being of another race and a speaker of another language-in this case Spanish- is marked and monitored. Much of the evidence presented is the work of other anthropologists that Hill cites to demonstrate her claims (i.e. Urciuoli, Lippi-Green, Hewitt) and can be categorized as indirect ethnographic evidence as Hill did not do the research herself. There exists also a large amount of Hill’s own research findings used as support for the claims relevant to this argument mapping; this can be categorized as direct ethnographic evidence because Hill made these observations and conclusions herself. There is one claim that is supported mostly by assumption because it involves a form of behavior that is never actually
In her article, she examines a particular part of the White American discourse, Mock Spanish. Mock Spanish is defined as a form of racist discourse that involves the use of grammatically incorrect forms of Spanish by White people in a disrespectful fashion. She makes six claims that are related to support her overlaying argument. The first four claims Hill makes are very similar. All of these four claims deal with the relationship between the White public and historically Spanish speaking populations. These claims are established as follows: There exists a double standard of discourse for White people and Spanish speakers; White public use of Spanish is not standard, usually grammatically incorrect and occurs even at high levels of education; The function of Mock Spanish is to elevate Whiteness while at the same time it functions in the racialization of a subordinate group; Mock Spanish is a form of racist discourse in that it projects a racist image of Spanish Speakers through direct indexicality. For the fifth claim, Hill asserts the linguistic incorporation of Mock Spanish occurs with other languages too, creating White “homogeneous heterogeneity”, but not to the same degree as it occurs with Mock Spanish. Her sixth and final claim is that findings in other anthropological studies and the phenomena of “crossing”, which refers to the use of …show more content…
Many of the claims Hill makes in her article are backed up by indirect ethnographic evidence and also direct ethnographic evidence. Many of the claims are centered on an idea that there exists a “White Public space,” an area of public life where being a White English speaker is normative but being of another race and a speaker of another language-in this case Spanish- is marked and monitored. Much of the evidence presented is the work of other anthropologists that Hill cites to demonstrate her claims (i.e. Urciuoli, Lippi-Green, Hewitt) and can be categorized as indirect ethnographic evidence as Hill did not do the research herself. There exists also a large amount of Hill’s own research findings used as support for the claims relevant to this argument mapping; this can be categorized as direct ethnographic evidence because Hill made these observations and conclusions herself. There is one claim that is supported mostly by assumption because it involves a form of behavior that is never actually