Let’s Talk about “Linguistic Terrorism”:
This piece was my final project for my WRIT 2910 undergrad tutoring and writing class. The purpose of this class was to be able to understand how to edit not only your own piece, but someone else's pieces as well. The point of this piece was to create a paper that related to one of the readings that we were assigned in class. I chose to write a piece based upon Gloria Anzaldua’s writing where she talks about her personal relationship with writing centers and how linguistic terrorism is used. This was a piece where I explored the idea of how language in the classroom can be used as a weapon as well as how students coming into classrooms that are primary english speaking can have their entire brains rewired due to their teachers not respecting them or even trying to understand them.
This piece shows my rhetorical analysis skills, which I believe is a genre that I truly excel in. However, this is an example of my work three years ago, and I feel like it has only improved. I learned a lot about the shared immigrant/ child of immigrants experience that is faced in classrooms across the United States. Individuality, when you are little is often seen as a weapon rather than a strength, and I feel like this piece was able to tell me a little more about who I am as well. I am most proud about incorporating both elements of my experience as a multilingual person, the need for more inclusivity within the writing center as well as Anzaldua’s experience in this piece. I feel like I was able to say what I wanted/ needed in a way that made sense and truly got my point across. This piece fits into my portfolio as an extension of my activism writing. It serves as an introduction of both who I am and what I stand for. This piece has taught me a lot about mixing personal voice and quoted voice within my work, and I hope to only improve on this skill. This assignment to me is really exciting because it feels like I was truly on the precipice of discovering my personal writing style.
