Language & Identity: Discovery of New Identities
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- Category: English: Novels
- Date Submitted: 01/11/2011 10:45 AM
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Language & Identity: Discovery of New Identities
Language can be used to convey many different moods and feelings depending on how it is applied. These three extracts are all about the discovery of new identities and have been purposefully chosen as none of the writers are English.
The first extract, taken from ‘The Color Purple’ is written from the perspective of a working class black woman living in the American South. This extract is a turning point in the story as Celie decides to stop writing her diary entries to God and starts writing them to her sister instead: “I don’t write to God no more, I write to you”. This loss of faith can be seen as the discovery of a new identity for her character. By writing to her sister instead we can see that Celie fears isolation, she needs to talk to someone about her problems. This extract is written in first person narrative. The speech throughout the extract is ironic as it supposed to be a formal letter but it is written in informal, spontaneous speech. Celie speaks in the vernacular and often her sentences do not make syntactical sense which undermines the seriousness of the topic in this extract: “She look at me serious”. The style of her language shows that she is not well educated and the words are written as they would be spoken: “What God do for me? I ast”.
Celie’s negative language is contrasted by Shug’s persuasive tone: “He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death”. Celie contrasts Shug’s list of three examples with her own four, emphasising her negative outlook “a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won't ever see again”. She then further dismisses God with another negative triplet: “Trifling, forgitful and lowdown”. This shows that Celie has the most topic control in the discussion and is able to bring down Shug’s positive examples with several of her own negative ones.
We sense that Celie has a pessimistic attitude towards men...
Language can be used to convey many different moods and feelings depending on how it is applied. These three extracts are all about the discovery of new identities and have been purposefully chosen as none of the writers are English.
The first extract, taken from ‘The Color Purple’ is written from the perspective of a working class black woman living in the American South. This extract is a turning point in the story as Celie decides to stop writing her diary entries to God and starts writing them to her sister instead: “I don’t write to God no more, I write to you”. This loss of faith can be seen as the discovery of a new identity for her character. By writing to her sister instead we can see that Celie fears isolation, she needs to talk to someone about her problems. This extract is written in first person narrative. The speech throughout the extract is ironic as it supposed to be a formal letter but it is written in informal, spontaneous speech. Celie speaks in the vernacular and often her sentences do not make syntactical sense which undermines the seriousness of the topic in this extract: “She look at me serious”. The style of her language shows that she is not well educated and the words are written as they would be spoken: “What God do for me? I ast”.
Celie’s negative language is contrasted by Shug’s persuasive tone: “He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death”. Celie contrasts Shug’s list of three examples with her own four, emphasising her negative outlook “a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won't ever see again”. She then further dismisses God with another negative triplet: “Trifling, forgitful and lowdown”. This shows that Celie has the most topic control in the discussion and is able to bring down Shug’s positive examples with several of her own negative ones.
We sense that Celie has a pessimistic attitude towards men...