THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ENGLISH COMPOSITION AND DISCOURSE

The notions and conceptualizations of individuals’ self-understanding continue to be transformed as the process of globalization accelerates and brings individuals from across borders to the forefront of the global stage. Self-awareness is complicated once the individual faces the arduous process of finding his or her voice through written composition and discourse. In my case, when I first came to the U.S. after September 11th, 2001, I did not have a basic grasp of what forces compelled people to move from one place to another, or how societal contexts shape the identity or the knowledge that individuals have about themselves. I brought with me the colonial vestiges that influence the psychological development of those individuals who reside in what is now called Mexico. I was shaped by cultural practices that were cultivated through the millennia before the year 1492. One of those is the sense of community that still stimulates my thoughts, actions, and spoken utterances. In addition, during the last five hundred years, the continuous blending or accommodation of ideas— whether through force, repression, or the massacre of masses—reshaped the identity of the collective. I brought with me the vague idea of seeing myself as mestizo—not so much through miscegenation, but rather through a mixed definition of what it meant to be a blend of European and Mesoamerican values. Paradoxically, this idea was strengthened during the post-revolutionary period in Mexico through the Indigenismo movement. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla states that through Indigenismo Mexicans glorified their shared indigenous past and simultaneously emphasized their European values adopted during and after the conquest. Colloquially speaking, the mainstream conception went: “We are proud of being descendants of theAztecs, but now we aremestizos.” The redefined perception of the indigenous people was implemented through the public education system in Mexico. This set of policies, which I will not go into in detail, can be an example of institutional racism; that is, the ostracizing of certain practices (e.g., language, customs, beliefs) of a specific group of people through the implementation of rules at the institutional level, which can be either conscious or unconscious. Via Indigenismo, policymakers and anthropologists first attempted to learn about indigenous people’s customs and ideals. Then, they began the process of “Westernizing” the indigenous communities (115–20). This hegemonic project embraced a nationalistic sentiment that developed along with Indigenismo. This nationalism was and continues to be taught at many public schools in Mexico. In my classrooms, I was obligated by such policies and other forces (such as internalized oppression— the belief that dark skin color made a human being inferior, a colonial vestige embedded within the population where I belonged) to adopt the belief that all indigenous cultures in my country demeaned our societal identity and did not allow us to be European-like. Bakhtin asserts, “Unitary language constitutes the theoretical expression of the historical processes of linguistic unification and centralization, an expression of the centripetal forces” (“Discourse in the Novel” 270). Such centralization was somehow grafted upon my identity. When I came to the U.S., I thought of myself as a stranger. I was extremely aware of my cultural values, and how these, juxtaposed with other “unstatic forces”—