Orality

traditional African dance called Mapouka is where this next dance gets its moves. “Twerking” is a sexually provocative form of dance, which involves mostly women dropping, popping the hips in an up-and-down bouncing motion to “articulate through kinetic orality different aspects of a rap song” (Gaunt 248) and used as a tool for social interaction. The dance originated in New Orleans: However, linked to a centuries-old “dance-drum” continuum rooted in African cultures, but received most of its…

in favor of community-speech practices. Dialect has its own social identity, therefore many speakers are not ready to abandon that social-deictic role of their vernacular. For instance, black english vernacular is often attacked for their improper orality literacy. Thus, standard english illustrates that white english is the proper way to speak, but because black vernacular allows you to see the cultural establishment within black community it should be accepted as a way to speak.. In an…

The Internets Impact on Our Brains Pulitzer Prize finalist/author Nicholas Carr believes that the internet will be our downfall “…Causing us to lose concentration… and struggle with what’s important.” (Carr, 575) Professor Trent Batson rebuttals Carr’s idea, claiming that the internet “…is making us smarter as we re-discover new ways to learn.” (Batson, 587) Both Carr and Batson make valid claims about what they believe to be true and to take only one of their sides can be quite difficult to…

City. Though it made its way towards the western coast of the United States of America, Hip hop did not gain popularity until the 1980’s. It can be divided into four sub-groups. Each of these groups represent hip hop in a unique way. In terms of orality, hip hop heavily relies on rap music, which involves speech, writing, and poetry. Hip hop also is heavily reliant on the use of audio which is portrayed through the art of DJing. B-boying, or rather more commonly known as breakdancing, also…

All God’s Chillen Had Wings This folktale by Caesar Grant was inspired by “The People Could Fly.” This tale tells a story about black flight and how Africans regained their power and freedom with the help of an older African man. No matter how confined one was, there was always a desire for freedom. The author, Grant, begins by clarifying that before slavery, everyone, including Africans were once free and could fly. He did this to let the readers know that in the beginning there were no…

A detailed enunciation of the author’s textual persona evidently contributes to the reader’s understanding and interpretation of the story. Language plays a central role in sustaining the community. Black values and life styles are strengthened within the American context when Black English is used. The black literary language not only shows love for life, but also the search and establishment of the self. This study entitled “Race and Gender as Themes in Selected Short Stories of Alice Walker”…

It is the latter who keep alive the bhasha theory of democracy, which sees democracy not as an import but a form of life native to the people. The Bhasha theory, if I may call it that, does not look for voice and partaking. Voice which has no theory of speech is like a viewer who can never be a witness. He cannot tell a story. Democracy is a commons of memory; the vote is simply a marker of their memory. Memory needs retelling, reinvention, but the memory of the modern democracy reads more like…

Rigoberta Menchú became one of the most controversial Nobel Peace Prize winners when her testimony was put under a microscope and discrepancies were found by multiple people working in academia. This is given in the edited manuscript of her verbal testimony in the book I, Rigoberta Menchú, as it presents itself as a truth of her life, although that’s debatable. Blame could be put on her editor, Elizabeth Burgos, herself, or the Guatemalan people who knew her personally that gave their own…

Aside from the adjustment that she had to make when participating in extracurricular activities while maintaining her academic performance, there were a few things that she did when doing her work, that was different than the way we (mainstream American students) interacted with it. I will never forget her mini laptop looking translator! She used it a lot, especially in classes like biology and English, when a lot of the words that were being taught were not words frequently used amongst she and…

Video games can lead to addiction, depression, aggression, and many health issues. In fact, research has been conducted for decades on the negative effects of video game play. So why then have video games become over a $16 billion industry? Well, video games have immense positive potential. In addition to their entertainment value, video games can offer considerable success when they are designed to address a specific problem or teach a specific skill. Video games can be a particularly valuable…