Against the Grain: Listening for Controversy

paired with “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive”

This discussion is designed to deepen interaction with the primary text by connecting to paratext in the form of YouTube comments, which critique the main arguments emerging from personal narrative. It may be most useful as a follow-up discussion and can link to other discussions or assignments about forms of writing.

Introduction

JS: Phuc Tran’s TedTalk offers a compelling personal story, in part because he weaves his humor and self-confident geekiness with powerful memories of his family’s refugee experiences and resettlement in the U.S. Like other Vietnamese American, refugee, and immigrant authors, Tran turns to his personal story to tell his family’s story in order to speak of history that is not well understood or appreciated in mainstream American culture. Indeed, his narrative not only exposes the bullying pressures to assimilate that he and his family faced but also becomes an expression of how he has command over this culture to spin his own story and to emerge as the person he really wants to be.

Yet, if we listen closely to his presentation, at times, he relies on his own experiences to make broader claims about language, expression, relationships, and identity, which don’t always hold up. Many of the YouTube comments below his video offer rebuttals and complications in what he says about the Vietnamese language in particular. The exchange that occurs between the main text and this paratext flesh out some of the underlying arguments about language and outlook, which one might not interrogate by listening to Tran’s narrative alone.

The following discussion activity is designed to dive deeper into the core issues raised in Tran’s talk and may also generate productive conversations about the extent to which we can rely on our personal experience to develop arguments and the value of incorporating multiple perspectives for deeper understanding.

Guide

Close Read: Audience Reactions

One of the affordances of engaging with a YouTube video as text is that there is so much information around the main content which can provide some clues on how to complicate the ideas presented. In the case of Phuc Tran’s talk, he presents a personal narrative that becomes the basis of an argument about language as a lens, which means it can shape our personal, cultural, and even national outlook. Take a look at some of the YouTube comments that begin to push back on the ideas he presents.

Use the ones below or go back to the YouTube page to find your own leads:

screenshot of @ngocbui7435 post 9 years ago I am Vietnamese and I find of most of his claims are absurd. Vietnamese has way to express condition, to think of what could happen if they had did something. About another claim that Vietnamese does not have "might, could, would", I think it's wrong too. While it's true that Vietnamese does not have "would", "could" could be expressed as "có thể", "might" could be expressed as "cũng có thế". For example: If he told me that, I would have lend him some money: Nếu nó nói với tôi, tôi đã cho nó mượn tiền. If he told me that, I could have lend him some money: Nếu nó nói với tôi, tôi có thể đã cho nó mượn tiền. If he told me that, l might have lend him some money: Nếu nó nói với tôi, tôi cũng có thể đã cho nó mượn tiền.

Screenshot of @fdt31415926535 8 years ago Vietnamese has subjunctive... However, Phuc's dad's English isn't sufficient enough to comprehend what he said. His father probably didn't "catch" the phrase "would have", or he was unable to comprehense it in English since it's not his mother tongue... Also, Phuc's Vietnamese is quite incomplete since he's left Vietnam at a young age... Vietnamese subjunctive form: Nếu đã , thì (có lẽ/perhaps) Just like a normal condition form, but Vietnamese language speaker could assume it to be in subjunctive form for an alternative result/future. Note that beside perfect tense, tenses are often optional in Vietnamese, speakers could assume what tense it belong to...

Screenshot of @leevanbinh 8 years ago I find that the presentation was very well delivered with a nice cadence of calmness and factually convincing. However, had I not been born in Vietnam and grown up in America, I would have sided with him on all points. Oops! Was that a subjunctive? My point is, there are subjunctive moods in the Vietnamese language. In Mr. Tran's case, his father probably did not use it much because of a cultural preference for not using the subjunctive, not the lack of it. I know Vietnamese has the subjunctive mood because I have used it myself.

Screenshot of @mrnaruwan 9 years ago Phuc keeps talking about "the subjunctive" when he actually means the conditional: "If it hadn't rained, we would have gone to the beach." I couldn't help thinking that Phuc's parents were probably quite capable of pondering and expressing the notion of "what might have been" but they just chose not to.

Questions:

  • What are the most important critiques you notice in the comments?
  • How do the comments reframe some of the key moments in Tran’s talk?
  • What questions do you have based on the debate we see across the main talk and the comments?

Discuss: Grammar and Identity

In many ways the title of Tran’s talk, “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive” tells us about the key concepts that link his personal narrative and his argument about language. Yet, the YouTube comments above complicate his story. Beyond strict grammatical “rules” dictating what’s possible in language—for example, whether the subjunctive mood exists—the audience’s comments suggest that one’s use of language reflects both cultural preference and individual choice and that there are many ways of expressing concepts beyond a simple grammatical structure.

  • In what ways do Tran’s stories really seem to reflect language, and when do you see other dynamics? Focus on one of the key moments in the video and discuss again how Tran describes language working. Then, discuss how you see other forces like culture or experience shape this moment. How are these two interpretations related? What’s more convincing to you and why?
  • The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis contends that the structure of a language determines how native speakers perceive the world and categorize experience. This is also known as linguistic relativity, an approach in linguistics that has been debated, criticized, and largely discredited. What are the implications of this hypothesis for understanding culture, communication, and even identity? To what extent do linguistic differences reveal a different outlook and at what point does this lead to stereotypes? Revisit some of the key moments of miscommunication and misunderstanding that Tran recounts. You may also want to revisit the validity of his claim that “different nations’ feelings of optimism” reflect their languages.

To understand more about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and linguistic relativity, check out this short video:

Linguistic Relativity: Does Your Language Change How You See The World?

To dive deeper into linguistic diversity in a way that builds on this hypothesis, watch another TedTalk titled “How Language Shapes the Way We Think”:

 

  • Connecting the ideas from Tran’s TedTalk, the youtube comments, and insights from your discussions, what do you think is the relationship between language, culture, and identity? How do you experience this? How might you “re-understand” your own languages (as Tran suggests) as a result of these discussions? You may even start by reflecting on how you inhabit the subjunctive and indicative moods.

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Polyphony: Reader and Explorations for First-Year Writing Copyright © 2024 by Jennie Snow, Elise Takehana, Diego Ubiera is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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