Phillips 1

Bridget Phillips

Stephanie Maenhardt

ENGL-1050-S17-Maenhardt

4 July 2017

Essay One:

Part One: Othering

They have drawn, as they say, a bright line between an "us" and a "them." Those on the

other side of the line are assumed to be unworthy of respect or hearing, and are in fact to be

regarded as a huge problem to the "us" who presume to judge "them." This tedious pattern has

repeated itself endlessly through human history and is, as I have said, the end of community and

the beginning of tribalism. (Robinson, 2013). For centuries, human beings have partaken in

othering by using ignorant categorizations based on the abundance of cultures, races, and

ethnicities. Generally, the majority culture or race uses othering to organize their often-

misinformed beliefs and ideals of the minority into a stereotypical description of the whole. Our

society has had history of participating in behaviors and beliefs that divide people into groups of

either objective understanding or unknown fear. Othering, and the general issues of tribalism, is

multifactorial, but can be improved once you understand the factors of people fearing the

unknown, lacking knowledge, having held these beliefs since childhood, holding attitudes about

differences contaminating the whole, not understanding the limitations of labels, and being

inconsiderate about how it has evolved to be more anonymous online.

While othering doesnt always equate to the majority fearing the minority, the divisions

it involves are based on a two-second observation and their brains fill in the rest with

unconscious ignorance. Humans fear the unknown because its unpredictable, yet hate and fear
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never lead to better understanding and the cycle will just continue unless people are educated.

Though, similar to addiction, sometimes people dont realize they are categorizing each other

and the whole idea of, the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem, doesnt ever

happen. While there are notions that people who are ignorant can never improve and a few

interventions arent going to do much, I still think that educating people and making them less

afraid of each other will help with a lot of problems.

As children fear the darkness in their own bedroom, the majority often has unconscious

notions of the minority that arent even based in reality. Like the child, the majority is freaking

out over a coat rack that kind of looks like a monster when viewed a certain way. In other words,

a generalization of the seemingly unfamiliar that leads to fear and eventually violence. The child

was scared of the coat rack because it was different to them and perhaps the child wouldnt have

gone to such violent means to feel safer if they were just more educated on the facts that fear is

not beneficial and only leads to more infectious fear.

With that in mind, in Mother Tongue, Amy Tan discusses how various people couldnt

understand her mothers language and would describe it as broken or limited as it deviated

from the norm of English being spoken. (Tan, Mother Tongue). I find this to be a great example

of othering because the majority of English speakers are used to their own way of speaking and

feel offended or insecure when there is a different way of using the language. While the other

way of speaking the language may be less common, the majority of speakers feel like it could

taint the whole language and they lash out at them by using demeaning terms to show that those

distinctions are wrong and need to be fixed. Contaminating the whole of something seems to

be a common theme of othering and when applied to culture or race, the majority culture can
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view the minority as being altered and that their only goal is to change the status quo into

something new and distinct.

As Min-Zhan Lu discusses in From Silence to Words, Writing as Struggle, shes

conflicted with maintaining the two aspects of her life as separate entities and the lurking new

third aspect of her is just as feared as her unknown future. (Lu, 147-157). In the Week 2

Discussion, Jeni Olson discusses how Lu is constantly adapting to her language environment

because of the fear that she will be judged if she uses the wrong terms. According to Jeni, Lu

is so confused by all the different ways she has been taught to believe that she is scared to write

the wrong thing in fear of being judged. Fear is a very common aspect of Lus autobiography

and she is constantly thinking about the dangers of not being perfect with her languages.

Similarly, Lu is confused because the Chinese language and ideals that are taught to her in

school often conflict with the English expressed by her family. Lu really cant strictly follow

either language for fear that the others will judge her and she struggles with using both of them

because her writing wants to combine them. Lus experiences shows the limitations of othering

because the issue with boxes is that when you dont fit with any of them, the boxes break and its

revealed that those restrictive confinements are more damaging than beneficial.

As joyful and seemingly helpful the use of a label maker is, everyone in society is

unique and they all have experiences, as well as personalities, that are more multifactorial than a

jar of thyme. While spices should be labeled to identify and classify them for cooking, people

should not because they are unclassifiable unless you use identifying factors that overlook their

numerous other factors and just end up generalizing them into another ignorant stereotype. In

review, culture is more complicated than paprika because unlike spices, culture is the overall
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belief of a group that often stems from long held beliefs that are passed through communication

and are deliberately distinct.

While othering may continue in society, it is still evolving in a sense and is becoming

more subtle. Nowadays, most of the acts of othering are seen through social media as it gives

people a mask to hide behind while they spit their beliefs and rarely hold any responsibility or

repercussions for their words. Othering isnt gone, if anything it has just moved to live primarily

in the internet and is now only occasionally returning to its summer home of real life. I think

othering moved because as Mary Gordon discusses in More Than Just A Shrine, people used to

blame others in xenophobic ways for various social issues like economic downturns rather often.

However, as time went on, blatant othering has become less acceptable and the supposed facts

that xenophobia spewed are slowly beginning to be seen as the ignorance it truly is. (Gordon, 3).

Not to say that xenophobia is gone by any means; there may always be people who get swept

into national politics and agree with the distracting blame games of the elites. However,

education is still the factor that leads to people respecting others more and looking past socially

constructed differences to find similar hobbies and form friendships outside of their tribes.

Regardless, I think othering is still highly present in the world, but has learned to hide

more in the shadows of societys slowly fading ignorance. One of the best ways to combat

ignorance is education and having a better understanding of the issues that are dividing us from

becoming a better-integrated society. Ignorance is not bliss when people are becoming violent at

their neighbors and holding onto the boogeyman beliefs that they were taught as a child.

Human beings are more unique and diverse than a million spice racks and treating them with

labels about singular phenotypes as you would with such deviates from their distinctiveness.

Regardless of race, or culture, or any other singular identity aspect, our society works better and
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more efficiently when we arent constantly at each others throats about melanin differences.

Yet, culture can still be a large aspect of someones identity and there should be a balance

between everyone being all the same and everyone is so vastly different that no one should even

talk to each other because it will just lead to disappointment and regret. Othering doesnt bring

people together, because when there is an us tribe and a them tribe, true success and unity

can never truly be reached, or at least not to its fullest potential. As highly complicated and

unlikely the true end of othering may be, it is still important to be peaceful in your tribe and be

respectful to the people you talk to daily so you can be just as nice to those outside of your tribe.

Part Two: Rhetorical Analysis

The written text I chose to further analyze is the chapter titled We Are All Third

Generation from the book And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America by

Margaret Mead. This book was published by Berghahn Books on July 30, 2000 and was

originally written in 1942 as a comprehensive sketch of American culture. I chose this text

because I felt like the notions of everyone in America being a third generation immigrant could

definitely be further evaluated with the intriguing conventions of each of the three generations.

The purpose of this text was for Mead to discuss her ideals of how generations acted in the

United States as the nation was, and still is, a country of immigrants. From the interesting

characterizations of the three generations to the general themes of the chapter, Mead uses a

strong rhetorical stance with her word choice, sentence structure, examples, and use of appeals.

Starting with word choice, Mead maintains the writing style of the 1940s as its very

formal and lacks humor to remain fully serious to the reader. By using words like faade, the

text is given a rather prim tone and seems to be very particular because she didnt use the word
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front as that meaning is far less proper. (Mead, 17). For a book that discusses the sociology of

generations, the word choice is effective and expected for the subject matter. The word choice is

formal because the concept is serious and adding humor or simplistic language could have

distracted the audience at the time. While the serious tone and diction of the writing may be less

engaging now, it was originally written at the start of WWII and I think the language is still very

successful.

Conversely, the sentence structure is often grammatically incomprehensive and swerves

from a qualified tone when its written with such bizarre grammar. Many of the sentences are

rather long and should be broken up for easier reading comprehension because I got confused

several times about a sentences purpose as it has several different ideas all conglomerated

together. For example, the sentence, If this then, this third-generation American, always moving

on, always, in his hopes, moving up, leaving behind him all that was his past and greeted with

enthusiasm any echo of that past when he meets its in the life of another, represents one typical

theme reflected in the form of the family, in the upbringing of the American child? has 8

commas, seems like 3 sentences, and suddenly ends in a question mark. (Mead, 23). There are

several sentences like this that just continue and this deviates from the meaning of the book.

Thus, I dont think the sentence structure was successful as it lacked the consistent formality that

the word choice presented.

However, Mead is very effective with examples that manage to be both engaging and

helpful to the reader to better understand her view of generations. Even with the previous

conglomeration sentence, there is still a viewable storyline about the struggles the first

generation faces to allow their offspring to be American. This storyline continues with various

examples that are plentiful and generally fit with the serious tone Mead sets. Though, the
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example about the first generations experiences with America as a personified person with, He

meets American law first in the warning note of his mothers voice: Stop digging, here comes a

cop. shows a slightly more humorous tone with just how random the digging example is.

(Mead, 24.) Still, I think the examples that Mead gave to exemplify her information were very

engaging and generally consistent with the subject matter.

Lastly, I found Meads use of appeals to be the most interesting part of the chapter as her

use of pathos, ethos, logos, and even some kairos fit well with the book. Pathos is used because

many of the examples show empathy, such as the second generation trying very hard to succeed

in America and be distinct from their first generation parents. With ethos, Mead is an American

cultural anthropologist and writes in a very credible, as well as professional, way as someone in

her field. Similarly, logos is expressed throughout the text as Meads ideas are explained with

thoughtful reasoning and her conclusions for each of the three generations mentalities are

consistent with one another. This chapter is successful because of the use of kairos, as the tone

and the overall textual organization are appropriate for an anthropology work of the 1940s. This

book was written at the time that many second and first generation Americans were experiencing

the difficulties of having a less traditional family. By exemplifying their various struggles, these

rhetorical appeals are magnificently used and this leads to the audience being persuaded.

In conclusion, the various elements of this anthropology book were strikingly used to

create a thought-provoking product of its time. Aside from occasionally lacking sentence

structure, the language and word choice gave the text a formal tone to properly present some

very informative themes about American character and rejecting the past life to truly embrace the

new one. Each of the examples supported the given information and allowed for a consistent

narrative about how the generations work off of each other similar to a diagram. All four of the
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appeals were used throughout this text and each one gave Mead more persuading power toward

the audience about her generational ideas. As each of the generations function best when

together, the textual elements are all used collectively to create an informative sketch about

immigrant family structure and how everyone in the United States is a third generation

American.
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Work Cited Page

Gordon, Mary. More Than Just A Shrine. New York Times. 3 November 1985: 4. Print.

Lu, Min-Zhan. From Silence to Words, Writing as Struggle. pp. 147-157.

Mead, Margaret. "We Are All Third Generation." And Keep Your Powder Dry: An

Anthropologist Looks at America. Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 June 2017.

Robinson, Marilynne. When I Was a Child I Read Books. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Harper

Perennial, 2013. Print.

Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue. SJSU. N.p, n.d. Web. 30 June 2017.