David N.

Pratt Summary

David Noble

WC: 334

Pratt Summary

Mary Louise Pratt starts off her lecture with describing a conversation between two seven or eight year olds talking about baseball cards. She chronicles the life of her son and him learning a language. She eventually translates this over to an Andean indian who wrote to King Phillip III in the seventeenth century. According to her, his work was found at the turn of the twentieth century in Copenhagen. In it, he relates Incan history through words used by Europeans. He related christian events dating back to Adam and Eve and put an Andean spin on them. Pratt details how he used, in his drawings, the positioning of the one in power, symbols, and how the Spanish ended up subverting Andean way of life.

The main reason for bringing up this guy is to show the power of imitation. He used Spanish words and language to show how the Andean people felt through the going-ons of the time. Pratt shows how he used the language to not only get his point across, but to also parody and imitate the Spanish themselves.

Next, she talks about European bourgeoisie and how they 'invented' themselves. She explains that they used the printing press to produce revenue and elevate themselves to riches. She uses these ideas to explain how in later life, people had become more 'simpler' because they were following the doctrine of their leaders who wanted a complacent electorate. I am unsure how this jump came about, but Pratt used this to illustrate current Americans lack of diversity and understandings through this, thus not comprehending dialects like the Andean guy and his parody of the Spanish.

She then goes on, talking about multicultural classes and how they act like a 'mind f***' the students and the origin of their language and history. She concludes with talking about Americans and the contact zones and how Americans need to learn to identify histories, cultural contexts and the like to value literacy and such.