Page 19 - My Mom Speaks Broken English: My Lingustic Identity; Language and Literacy Project, UWRT 1103

an intimacy into my own perspective that I may not be able to
portray through a constructive essay. Therefore, I decided to
create a collection of story narratives that could convey the
emotions, feelings, and memories that are associated with my
linguistic identity.
Through my stories, I think that my project was successfully
able to show a contradiction of these common assumptions.
“Broken” English does not equate to “incorrect” English; thick or
foreign accents do not suggest lack of intelligence. The stories of
my parents signify this distinction; I was able to feature two
educated and intelligent characters, both of which do not solely
use conventional forms of American English. It was this theme
that I would most like any reader to internalize. These stories
are being told to bring awareness to the individual biases that
people have based on language. My challenge to those reading
my stories is to recognize this bias and take responsibility for
these assumptions. This requires one to attach faces and stories
to the prejudices that we have unconsciously developed. My
primary goal through this project was informing and adding
perspective to others’ perceptions; I therefore challenge the
reader to seek out these lessons in these narratives.

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