The Effects of Cultural and Linguistic Assimilation - Essay Example

Cultural and linguistic assimilation into a different community contains within it prospects for both personal and moral growth, but also isolation and alienation from one’s original community. It allows for personal growth by allowing the creation of opportunities and rights not available through any other means. And it allows for isolation and alienation when the distinction between public and private life falls apart, and full individuality is lost in both realms. Nowhere is this clearer than in Richard Rodriguez’s piece “Aria”, in which he describes the “bilingualism” (as in those who believe that teaching young children two languages is necessary) that ultimately changed the structure of his original community.

To Rodriguez, his original community of Spanish was a private one, which he could speak in the home. In contrast, Spanish to Los gringos is just another public language, and to Rodriguez, the language of Los gringos would be the same. In the end, although his assimilation into the English community changed his prospects for Americanized success (or public gain), the household “[he] returned to each afternoon was quiet. Intimate sounds no longer rushed to the door to greet me… Once I learned the public language, it would never again be easy for me to hear intimate family voices”.

And therein lies the factor of alienation that the assimilation caused for the narrator, standing in stark contrast with the obvious benefits of being “Americanized” in the “American nation”.In Bich Minh Nguyen’s piece “The Good Immigrant Student”, the narrator recounts the story of a youth spent trying to assimilate into a different cultural community, initially struggling with the language. Moving to Grand Rapids, which is affectionately called “An All-American City”, she recounts that her sister and her “were Americanized as soon as [they] turned on the television”.

By telling us this, she deemphasizes the lasting effect of a bilingual education, which, like Rodriguez, does not believe ultimately is the primary factor in assimilation into a different cultural/linguistic community. She says, “Today, bilingual education is supposed to have become both a method of assimilation and a method of preservation, an effort to prove that kids can have it both ways. They can supposedly keep English for school and their friends and keep another language for home and family.

” These things the narrator finds impossible in conjunction. And therein lie the potential harms of a cultural and linguistic transformation of a young child, trying to survive through these formative years. Ultimately, the distinction that “bilingualism” makes between a public life (that of school and friends) and private life (that of home and family) will break down. The narrator of Nguyen’s story recounts her stepmother’s fear that learning English will take over wholly and push the Vietnamese out of their heads.

This, of course, is impractical. However, what is not impractical is that, culturally, assimilation will deemphasize the importance of one community as the other becomes important, and values from one community will be lost in favor of the values of the other, newer community. If this is the case, then it is certainly possible that linguistic and cultural alienation from one’s family and household will result. Younger children, in particular, might also find the process of assimilation difficult to deal with, which is different from the effects of the assimilation itself.

Nguyen recounts how terrified she was of reading English in front of the class. Asked to read louder, the young girl has trouble pronouncing words, which prompts other kids to tease her and chant unkind words. Although these taunts are painful, what to Nguyen might seem more painful is the sense of shame which accompanies her failure—her failure to be “invisible at that moment”. The end goal of her assimilation, at that moment, was to just disappear in the crowd. Rodriguez, talking about individuality and assimilation, mentions something along these lines: that separateness does not equate to individuality in the public realm.

In public, individuality is achieved by individuals who are members of the crowd, much like Nguyen’s narrator. In contrast, in private, individuality is a matter of separateness from the crowd, and a matter of connection “with intimates”. Rodriguez recounts how it was only when he was fully assimilated, or able to see himself not as a resident alien but as an American, could he seek “the rights… necessary for full public individuality”.