Toni Morrison: A Noble Purpose Of Language

Language can make people feel oppress and subjugate, Toni Morrison gives examples in her Nobel lecture. A example we are given is when the young people go to the old woman's house and test her if the bird is dead or not because of her disability. “They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead."” We see a sign of dominance since, like I said earlier, the youngsters know the old woman can’t see. A noble purpose of language here is when Morrison said “The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of power to the instrument through which that power is exercised.” The fact that Toni Morrison was able to have these oppress situation and flip it on the youngsters
Toni Morrison talks about how the bird is dead or alive but translates it to see if language is dead or alive. In this quote, “ Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency - as an act with consequences.” Our language is being controlled since others have some sort of power over us. For example, now at days we can’t protest or talk about something without us being shut down, or somebody getting offended about our own talks. “For her a dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis.” I feel like Toni Morrison is trying to let us know that apart from the language might die of but we can make a change to day, we can work with it
Howard Beale rant is really opened to me since I feel like everything is so high passed now at days, we forget about our values and ethics. Howard Beale speech is motivational but the news company is trying to get more views since they want more ratings. They take Howard’s rant for a profit, somehow they knew that the views were tired about all the problems in their communities and knew they would get an excellent response to this rant. It’s crazy how so many people were taking their stress out but it’s because Howard was upset him being let go by the company;anybody would react like that if they were in that position and had the chance to show the unfairness in their