Introduction
There are many forms of rhetoric and almost as many uses, but one thing is consistent across all rhetoric: its persuasive nature. Rhetoric can be simply defined as the use of words, gestures, facial expressions, body language, and media by one person or group of people to influence another person or group of people. Rhetoric exists for the purpose of molding and shaping others' ideas, actions, and world in order to maintain control of one's own world.
The uses of rhetoric are no more apparent than in the formation, development, and maintenance of social and cultural values, structures, practices, and norms. People use rhetoric to establish in each others’ minds what is acceptable behavior and to ensure that such behavior is, in fact, what is practiced between people.
But communication often breaks down, and struggle for understanding or outright conflict results. This is particularly true when the parties involved in a given communication come from different cultural or linguistic backgrounds. Often different cultures have varying rhetorical expectations, such as the directness of American argumentation versus the circumspect narrative style of the Japanese. Such conflicts can occur either on a one-to-one basis or at much larger societal levels: in government, in business, in religion, in social contacts, and in the classroom.
Often in such cases, one party or the other attempts to enforce its own rhetorical style, or simply fails to understand the other party's. Of course, either can attempt to understand the other with the intention of adopting at least some of the other’s rhetorical methods and of adapting at least some of their own rhetorical methods to those of the other, in order to bridge the gap, explain the difference between the two, and use that difference as a unifying element. But any teacher who has tried to explain Standard American English rhetoric to Asian, Arab, or ghetto students, or who has attempted to understand these students, knows how difficult such a task can be.
The choices that people make, of course, will vary, and how people choose has very real ramifications, indicating the need for practical applications of intercultural, interlinguistic, international, and interphilosophic understanding and tolerance.
To understand these ramifications and applications, we can look at the history of the United States over the past five centuries, filled as it is with racism, challenges to religious freedom, interlinguistic animosity, and “gender wars.”
And this is the starting point for this essay: the conflicts which arise between cultures and languages, how these conflicts relate to politics and society, and ultimately how they influence our methods of education.
So I need to say at the beginning that this essay is about alienation. Specifically, it is about cultural, linguistic, and social alienation. It is about the alienation that occurs when one is not allowed to be one’s self, when one is made to feel unacceptable or inferior because one is different. It is specifically about the alienation that occurs when one is set aside, ostracized, or made an outsider because of one’s culture, language, or skin.
This essay takes a position sometimes politically correct; sometimes politically unpopular; sometimes in agreement with past writers, researchers, and autobiographers; sometimes at odds with these same people.
Mannes (1968) asks,
Who are you? You singly, not you together. When did you start – that long day's journey into self? When do you really begin to know what you believe and where you're going? When do you know that you are unique – separate – alone? (reprinted in Hoopes, 1969, p. 3)
She suggests that each of us stands alone, separate from each and every other person. Yet Western – or at least U.S. – society does not necessarily view things in quite this way. While we speak of individuality, we are a society, in fact, built on conformity. While we speak of individual freedom and uniqueness, we as a society prefer people who fit the melting pot concept popularized by Roosevelt (1917): those who blend into the crowd. When we find someone who truly is unique – who thinks for one’s self, who is culturally, linguistically, or philosophically different or who lives a different lifestyle – we don't honor that uniqueness; we push the person into isolation and are willing to accept her/him “back into the fold” only when s/he becomes like everyone else.
But Mannes (1968) offers a different perspective.
The time of discovery is different for everybody....I suggest that the first recognition comes when others try to tell you what you are. (reprinted in Hoopes, 1969, p. 3)
With this in mind, we need to enter this examination of cultural, linguistic, and personal alienation, specifically as it occurs in education, and what it does to the human identity and spirit.
My objective in addressing this hypothesis is multi-faceted.
First, I conduct a threefold historical and literature review. This review begins with the dominance by conquering cultures through the annihilation of existing governments, religions, and languages and through the forced adoption of the conquerors’ governments, religions, and languages. It then proceeds to consider how the centuries-old debate over multilingualism and multiculturalism, capped by the Official English/English Only movement, has resulted in numerous laws directly relating to the governance of this continent and the education of both our children and our university students. Finally, it concludes with commentary and autobiographical material from several authors on how the bifurcation (defined below) of multiculturalism and multilingualism affects individuals’ identities.
Next, by supplementing this research and autobiographical material with two original case studies, I add to the knowledge of how this can directly affect the education and lives of multilinguals in very different ways. In particular, I explore the identity issues which develop around the difference between the language and culture of the home and the language and culture of education. I define this difference not in terms of grammar and syntax or in terms of national and ethnic cultures, but in terms of uses, modes, and manners of communication, as well as the social/cultural identity implications of those uses, modes, and manners.
But this essay would be incomplete were it to conclude at such a point, since this debate must be seen in its larger historical context – touched upon in the historical and literature review, in the autobiographies, and in the case studies – when it is realized that English is not the original language of these continents and “middle-class”, white, male-dominated America is not the natural norm of society; Spanish was here prior to English (Castellanos, 1983), the indigenous tongues were here prior to either the modern European or the modern Asian tongues (as opposed to the ancient Asian antecedents of the indigenous languages), and non-whites and women have been driving forces on this planet and in the Americas for millennia.
Thus, I have had to approach this research with an understanding that we are not, in reality, looking simply at a question of cultural and linguistic coexistence between a host culture/language and one or more immigrant culture/languages, but rather at an extended history of conquering and dominance of “home” or “native” culture/languages by invading, outside, emigrating culture/languages. I show that this invasion and dominance has occurred not only in terms of intercultural, international, and inter-religious war, but also in the inference of governments and educational systems into the privacy of citizens’ homes and family lives.
Consideration of all the historical and prehistoric ramifications of this antithesis, however, would require several volumes. Therefore, for the purposes of this document, I follow from the case studies to a discussion and comparison of their results and implications for educational rhetoric and multilingual education.
I conclude this treatise with recommendations for further study, action, and social programming, particularly as relates to the inextricable elements of education and governance.