Rodriguez's Use Of Communication In Language By Richard Rodriguez

Rodriguez grew up as a Mexican immigrant in a middle class white dominated neighborhood. In his growing up and accustoming with the world around him, he learns that language may not be the key to the intimacy he had grown so accustomed to. Although, one may communicate intimacy through language. Rodriguez transferred into school without knowing
English until he’s forced to learn it with the help of his school teacher. As a result, Rodriguez finds himself forgetting bits and pieces of how he used to communicate in Spanish because of the family’s frequent use of English in attempt to help the children learn English. This shift in
Rodriguez’s life hurts Rodriguez in a way he had never felt before. At this moment there had been a death in his family
His
Grandma is introduced here as being disappointing for his lack of skill in communicating in
Spanish. According to him, Spanish had been holding the family together in a new land and now that they had lost it, he links English to being the stake driver in his family’s tight knitness. He says how his father had been able to express himself freely in Spanish but is unable to carry that same feeling out in English. Here, the difference in language is what can change a man that

Rodriguez had looked up to for so long. But in contrast as time goes on, he sees that this intimacy can be expressed in different ways other than language. There’s unspoken solidarity between himself and his siblings as they all go through school. “The communication of intimacy passes through the word to enliven its sound. But it cannot be help on the word but on person”
(234). Rodriguez argues that language cannot be the sole bearer of intimacy and in contrast it’s actually the energy and meaning behind these words that give them their feelings of intimacy.
Language is not intimacy, as Rodriguez learns, but one may express intimacy through
Rodriguez grew up as a Mexican immigrant in a middle class white dominated neighborhood. In his growing up and accustoming with the world around him, he learns that language may not be the key to the intimacy he had grown so accustomed to. Although, one may communicate intimacy through language. Rodriguez transferred into school without knowing
English until he’s forced to learn it with the help of his school teacher. As a result, Rodriguez finds himself forgetting bits and pieces of how he used to communicate in Spanish because of the family’s frequent use of English in attempt to help the children learn English. This shift in
Rodriguez’s life hurts Rodriguez in a way he had never felt before. At this moment there had been a death in his family according to him. He feels as if the intimacy in his family had died. He mourns this loss by himself. “I felt that I had shattered the intimate bond that had once help the family close. The original sin against my family told whenever anyone addressed me in Spanish and I responded confounded” (231) is what Rodriguez has to say about this time in his life.