Analyzing Munoz's 'Leave Your Name At The Border'

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America-the most diverse country in the world has hundreds of different cultures and different languages. With so many nationalities and languages, a person from another country might think that there can’t be just one national language in the United States. In fact, English is the primary language in America and its most likely not going to change. Or is it? Most immigrants that immigrate to America come with the belief that they won’t lose their primary language and easily balance their foreign language with the English language. Unfortunately, American culture believes in something called “the melting pot” where we melt all cultures that come to America into one super culture. Conservatives believe in having English as the only language…show more content…
Nguyen is an American novelist who emigrated from the Vietnam and used her life story to write about “the melting pot” in her article “The Good Immigrant Student”. A third author who also spoke out in light of America’s “melting pot” is Manuel Munoz. In Munoz’ article “Leave Your Name at the border” he talks about the issue of code-switching in a town that is only whites and Mexicans. Bich Minh Nguyen complicates Robert King’s argument on how the melting pot is a good conception by using pathos showing how Nguyen assimilates and gets over the fact that she was an immigrant. Nguyen also believes that the melting pot has a negative side in which immigrant’s loser their culture and forget their foreign language. Manuel Munoz supports Bich Minh Nguyen’s argument that people should rebel against the melting pot by showing how in assimilation, one culture presumably overrides the other one using his hometown of Dinuba California. Robert King refutes Munoz’s argument against the melting pot by using counterarguments against the “official…show more content…
Yet, she doesn’t fully believe in the melting pot because she shares her loss of culture to the reader by using pathos. Robert King uses unique otherness and arguments against official English to support the melting pot. Robert King states that unique otherness “immunizes countries against linguistic destabilization, and gives a country like America something to be unified under” (King 442). King uses unique otherness because Americans share values such as English, education, justice, freedom, patriotism, and democracy. Although a majority of Americans still speak a different language, America as a whole is unified by the American values stated above. Bich Minh Nguyen supports this part of King’s argument by using bilingual education and television. For example, Nguyen states that “bilingual education is supposed to have become both a method of assimilation and a method of preservation, an effort to prove that kids can have it both ways” (Nguyen 460). Nguyen uses this as a means of proving that the melting pot is good in the way that it keeps some culture and doesn’t complete throw it away. Additionally, Nguyen quotes that “we were Americanized as soon as we turned on the television” (Nguyen 460). English was the only language on television in the 80’s which forced people to become Americanized by making everybody

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