Influence Of Ethnic Literature On American Culture

America is built on succeeding waves of immigration. The immigrant experience has strengthened and renewed the country. We have seen the European settlers come to the new world, bringing with them business knowledge that had aided with the development of the United States. The harsh events of the slave trade also helped shape the American culture. Language, food, entertainment, traditions andworship have been incorporated in the American society, creating or enhancing the current culture been experienced.
Aspects of each society were taking and put together in somewhat of a ‘melting pot’ and out of it came the America way of life. From Native Americans to African American slaves to the Hispanics who come here both legally and illegal, the American society has managed to adapt to thesepeople while at the same time growing as a society. The country benefits have many of the immigrants bring with them many different ideas and skills needed from growth in a civilization. Slangs came about because of the clash of different languages and foreign crops were introduced to the area with the arrival of immigrants.
Each minority has opened to American culture a little window, wherewe can see the world from different perspectives through literature. For instance African American literature is a reflection of slavery and African roots and provides us with a better understanding of the way of life of black people. Communication was a prevalent struggle amongst the Africans in the new world and words had to be developed in order for everyone to have similar meaning to avoid anymisunderstanding. So here comes the advancement in language structure in the US.
Holly Martin, author of the article Code-switching in US ethnic literature: multiple perspectives presented through multiple languages, speaks about code-switching and its effect on linguistic culture. She makes reference that one doesn’t switch back and forth between languages arbitrarily nor is it to mimic thespeech of the community in which he or she is situated but she states it’s a conscious decision to create the desired effect and to promote the validity of his or her own language. This is an attempt to not getting dominated by the official language of the residing country, in this case English, but to retain aspect of ones own culture with language playing a critical part of that.
In terms oflanguage, proximity places an integral role in the influence it has on American culture and in places such as Florida, California, New Mexico and Texas, it’s not uncommon for we to hear the Spanish language on the streets. With the close proximity of the US to countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean also, we find that a lot of Latin immigrants settle in the states and in states wherethe climate is suitable for them. Normally the host country is the dominant culture and often times ‘drowns out’ the smaller culture while at the same time some cultures remain intact because of the bond developed amongst people of similar culture and other times this is integrated into the US society and become a significant part of culture. Now many businesses in the states are quick to employbilingual workers. So what started out as a quest to retain certain aspects of a society that we are leaving becomes a big part of future success.
Compare the popularity of the Spanish language in the US as oppose to the minimal use of Chinese or Yiddish and we can see that it has a great deal to do with the relative short distance many Hispanics have to travel to get to the states in comparisonto the far distance these Asians or Europeans have to go. However, territorial proximity does not mean cultural proximity, and differences between Hispanic and American cultures might be as big as differences between Jewish, Asian and African comparing with American culture. They all have to adjust to the rules and regulations of the American culture. The roles in the ethnic American cultures...