Custom «Arts of the Contact Zone» Essay Paper Sample

Mary Louise Pratt concern about the Contact Zones contains a great deal of truth in it and can be as well considered as a fact. Just as her definition puts it I also concur with the idea that a Contact Zone can be described as a moment in time or a place where two or more cultures that are different come into contact to establish some kind of relation.

Her claims seem very well researched and very true since drawing from historical times people have always made asymmetrical power relations. This fact can be traced back from institutions such as slavery and colonialism up modern times where globalization has made different cultures around the globe to come into contact.

Louise supports her ideas by citing trans-culturation and auto-ethnographic as the two distinguished phenomenon that characterize the Contact Zone. The idea of Contact zones is very objective since cultural conflict is an occurrence that is live in every community where peoples cultures conflict in different context from economic, education in politics and generally in social life.

Louise uses a language that is very free from emotion by relating to facts. For instance she describes the situation at Stanford University exploring the different cultures, values and ideas from students of different cultural backgrounds (Gibian 201)

“How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand” by Michael Erard

For the past few centuries, many dialects of the English language have evolved such that the language is transforming in to language that is not easy to understand. Just as Michael Erard puts it, English has mingled with so many local languages with results being the evolution of local dialects that are trudging on towards global tongues. English has successfully conquered the world by escaping the global boundaries and evolving into more than what many expect it to be.

According Erard research that is well versed has demonstrated that the free forms of English that are being adopted by local speakers of other languages are being reinforced by shortages in the number of native speakers of the language. For instance he cites the case in China where it is estimated that hundreds of millions of people can write and read English quality spoken English does not get enough practice.

Erards claims do not contain any bias since taking a language like Chinese for example the English that they speak and the one they might speak in future are ending up to side like Chinese and this also applies to other languages. The assumption here is that English might be happily adopting an alternative life style in the absence of its speakers. English is turning into what in the rear future might be termed as Panglish. As Erard points out native speakers of English might have to have to re-learn their own language all afresh since what is familiar to them will have taken a completely different angle (Ghim Lian 172).

"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell notion on the role that cultural traditions play in plane crashed can be dismissed just as his own opinion. This is because though this might be one of the probable causes of a plane clash, plane clashes have always been caused by many other conditions that are no related to the crews or pilots culture. For instance technical hitches, poor weather conditions and many other factors have been identified as contributing factors.

Though the Gladwell’s information draws examples from some form research carried out on Korean Airlines, it is wrong to generalize or assume that most clashes most are caused by cultural differences between pilots, co-pilots who sometimes fail to communicate effectively. Pilots fatigue and inefficiency in traffic control of the airline.

This is a very subjective approach in determining the causes of plane clashes. In reference to the report carried out on the Avancia crash (the NTSB) Gladwell puts it that the probable cause could have been failure of crew to manage fuel load on the plane but does not state that this is a fact so this information is implicit. Otherwise even the pilot can read shortages in fuel loads and made appropriate arrangements.

The author’s technique of explaining his ideas is a bit persuasive but not at all convincing. The use of words like may which have been oftenly repeated shows that the authors employs his own opinion and brings his own bias into his discussion (Gladwell 222).