Project 3 - Research Proposal

After time and thought, my paper will be on the validity and benefits of teaching, learning and using, Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills.  

These include:

• Mindfulness Skills
• Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills
• Distress Tolerance Skills
• Emotion Regulation Skills

I will write about developing programs and resources for educating people about the values and benefits of using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills (DBT Skills.) I will focus on implementing ways of "paying forward" DBT skills to "at-risk" youth and adolescents. I will include facts, experiences, and reasons for how and why DBT skills should be taught.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, the writer describes her background in a dual culture society.  She recalls personal experiences as a child, having multiple required speech classes and being targeted because of the way she spoke. She was treated like Speaking Spanish in America made her less than those who spoke English. Anzaldua claims, "If you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language...I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself."  She struggles with the passion she has for her language and her feelings of not being able to embrace it. Anzaldua describes, “Being Mexican is a state of soul – not a state of mind.”  This thought comes after a lifetime of enduring two cultures’ demands. Realizing a sense of pride from her Latino culture opened a doorway of opportunity into her academic culture.  Knowing she has evolved and is a part of a new future she accepts both cultures’ positives and negatives and uses them to inspire her writings.

If Black English isn't a Language, then tell me what is?

The thesis to this article is located in the first paragraph when James Baldwin states, “The argument has nothing to do with language itself but with the role of language.”  I think that this statement says a lot about the impact that language had/has on the African American race. The article states that people evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.  Black English is formed under so many historical conditions of America, it just transformed ancient elements into a new language. We learned that it is a language that while it is different from the standardized English it is still related. As Americans we need to look at it fairly as its own language.  Language brings people together. As the writer says “It goes without saying, that language is also a political instrument, means, & proof of power.” This quote is important to our understanding of language variations & social justice because language is power. Language is the most vivid key to identity so without it you have nothing and the points out, language from place to place.

Malcolm X Prison Studies

A civil rights leader and political activist, Malcolm X’s education came about because of his prison studies. He uses logos by declaring that his writing of EVERY word in the dictionary caused him to understand what books are saying. He also uses logos when he states that he "studied intensely".  He uses pathos by saying that he had never been so free in his life after learning to read, letting the reader relate to the freedom of a book. He also uses pathos when he talks about staying up late and reading because this calls upon to people's need to escape.  He was “escaping” prison by reading.  He also uses pathos when he talks about studying things that might “help the black man” or “battle the white man” which appeals the need to feel safe.  Ethos is used by him saying that an English writer called him, so he must be “someone important”.  He did not receive a formal education from a college or university; he got his education in a different type of institution, prison.