How does the journalist feel about forced language assimilation (i.e. the view/expectation that everyone in America must learn English) and what does she believe is the relationship between accent, identity, and power?
I think that the journalist feels that forced language assimilation is something that Donald Trump wants to do because he believes that English is the superior language and feels that everyone in his country should speak. However what the journalist said at the end of her article about how Trump believes in forced assimilation because he fears the Spanish speaking community due to the sheer growth and amount of people speaking the language. Donald Trump is scared. The author believes that holds cultural identity and, to many people and many communities across the United States it holds cultural value to them. What Trump is failing to see from this is that Spanish is not just a language that people speak, but it also represents individuals and identifies them by what language they speak and who they might be cultural. Forced assimilation will get Trump nowhere, as the world continues to grow so will the Spanish speaking community as it is already one of the most spoken languages on the planet.
What do you notice about the journalist’s own language? Do you agree with her views?
I notice that the journalist does acknowledge her own language and that she speaks it and that her family has grown up with it in the article. At the beginning of the article, it seems to be more focused on what Trump’s ideas on the situation are until she talks about how her grandmother uses the language. She provides context about how her grandmother lived and lives now and how her culture has kept her who she is. The j0urnalist has, at this point switched to a more personal view of the situation as opposed to the more political view that she had used before. The journalist uses personal experiences to express why her culture matters to her for example when the grandmother would go to see her and her siblings etc. I think that the author believes that she appreciates and feels her culture and that she believes that somebody like Trump can not go around changing that.
If someone threatened to take away your culture what would you do?