Ashley Lazorchak
WR 121
Rhetorical Analysis
Arts of the Contact Zone
Mary Louise Pratt is a Professor at New York University and teaches Spanish
and Portuguese Languages and Literatures. She received her B.A. in Modern
Languages and Literatures in 1970, her M.A. in Linguistics in 1971, and her Ph.D. in
Comparative Literature in 1975. Her areas of research and interest include: Latin
American literature, cultural studies, women and print culture in Latin America,
travel literature, cultural theory, as well as others. Mary Louise Pratt has received
numerous honors and awards, including: Guggenheim Fellowships, Pew Foundation
Fellowships, and NEH grants. She has served as a president for the Modern
Language Association in 2003 and has a small selection of published work. Her
published work includes Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literacy Discourse,
Linguistics for Literature, and Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.
Arts of the Contact Zone is connected to Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and
Transculturation in the sense of it being an introduction that was used for a lecture
at the Modern Language Association. While Arts of the Contact Zone was originally
written as a lecture; Mary Louise Pratt later turned it into an essay. The essay
focuses on literacy at the start and progresses into a term referred to by Pratt
known as the “contact zones.” Her reference to the “contact zone” is defined by
Pratt, which she states in her lecture: “to refer to social spaces where cultures meet,
clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical
relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery or their aftermaths as they lived out
in many parts of the world today” (Pg. 487). Mary Louise Pratt expresses the
importance on the “contact zone” through personal experience as well as historical
examples and brings to light the value of the “contact zone,” also known as “cultural
mediation” (Pg. 497) and how it affects our every day life without our realization.
At the start of Arts of the Contact Zone, Mary Louise Pratt begins her lecture
based on a story that she tells the audience that entails a conversation her son and
his friend Willie shared one day. The story is connected to the main topic of her
lecture, which happens to be literacy. While using a personal experience can be an
intense way to connect with an audience, the story she uses allows the audience to
connect with her on a personal level as well as an emotional level. As she uses the
personal experience, the audience is able to feel closer to Mary Louise Pratt and she
makes herself seem relatable or even equal to the group she is speaking to. By doing
this, the audience has a chance to connect or relate by using their own personal
experience as well. This technique was a demonstration of pathos and was an
efficient way of hooking the reader or listener in the sense of them wanting to know
more, as well as how the story will tie in to literacy.
The story focuses on her young adolescent son Sam and his love for baseball
cards. She uses this example as a way of showing her son and his friend Willie using
the limited literacy skills they have learned so far. Through his passion of baseball
cards, her son learned many things about life such as “exchange, fairness, trust, the
importance of processes as opposed to results, what it means to get cheated, taken
advantage of, even robbed” (Pg. 485) as well as “the history of American racism and
the struggle against it through baseball; he saw the Depression and two world wars
from behind home plate. He learned the meaning of commodified labor, what it
means for one’s body and talents to be owned and dispense by another. [...] Through
the history and experience of baseball stadiums he thought about architecture, light,
wind, topography, meteorology, the dynamics of public space” (Pg. 485). The
examples Pratt includes in her story about her son shows that his literacy evolved
from his desire to learn more about baseball cards and that literacy is a part of every
day life and is significant to pursuing things we enjoy. As her son expanded his
knowledge from literacy, he was able to gain knowledge in many other things. While
this was positive to Pratt, she states in her lecture that she “was delighted to see the
schooling give Sam the tools with which to find and open all these doors. At the
same time I found it unforgiveable that schooling itself gave him nothing remotely
as meaningful to do” (Pg. 486). With this statement, Pratt introduces her purpose of
the lecture, which is based on the fact that she believes multicultural learning in
schools is not significant enough.
As Pratt finishes the story regarding her son, she eases into another example,
which happens to be a historical story and continues by laying down the foundation
for the discussion of literacy between cultures. Mary Louise Pratt begins her
historical story by telling the audience about the manuscript found in Copenhagen
that was written by an Andean man named Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. It is
written in Quechua as well as “ungrammatical and expressive” Spanish and was a
letter addressed by an Andean to King Phillip III who resided in Spain. The
manuscript had never been read from a society that was considered to be literate
and consisted of twelve hundred pages long. It was titled The First New Chronicle
and Good Government and included eight hundred pages of written text while the
remaining four hundred pages included “captioned line” drawings. While the letter
was substantial, it took an abundance of years to bring light to the manuscript that
Guaman Poma wrote and many more years after that for it to be interpreted and
appreciated for what it really was. By Pratt using this story, she allowed the
audience to see that people were slow to appreciate how powerful literacy is and
the importance of something such as a manuscript written by an Andean man. This
historical story Pratt uses not only gives way to her upcoming topic concerning the
“contact zone,” but also allows Pratt to continue to establish relationships with the
academic audience, such as professors, instructors, students or even historians.
Throughout Pratt’s historical example, she introduces the term the “contact
zone” and continues to define what it is. As her historical story progresses, it is clear
that Guaman Poma’s manuscript is an impeccable example of the “contact zone,” and
as Pratt states in her lecture: “In sum, Guman Poma’s text is truly a product of the
contact zone. If one thinks of cultures, or literatures as discrete, coherently
structured, monolingual edifices, Guaman Poma’s text, and indeed any
autoethnographic work, appears anomalous or chaotic…” (Pg. 492). It shows the
audience that everyone will decipher the letter differently, based on their position
within the contact zone. As Pratt wraps up her historical example, she connects the
“contact zone” with literacy and includes some of the “literate arts of the contact
zone” such as “autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration,
bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular
expression” (Pg. 492). While she includes the positive aspects to the “contact zone,”
Pratt also includes the negative aspects to the “contact zone” which include
“miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, absolute
heterogeneity of meaning” (Pg. 492). By showing the pros and cons to the “contact
zone,” Pratt allows the audience to see how these relate to present day.
Continuing on the topic of the “contact zone,” Mary Louise Pratt begins her
next section by explaining how “contact zones” compare with the concept of
community that takes place in the academic field. “The idea of the contact zone is
intended in part to contrast with ideas of community that underlie much of the
thinking about language, communication, and culture that gets done in the
academy” (Pg. 493). She uses an author and professor by the name of Benedict
Anderson in this section and explains Anderson’s ideas about “imagined
communities” (Pg. 493), which is based on a book he has written. As she exposes
Anderson’s ideas as well as her own, she uses his name and examples as a credibility
source in her lecture. It allows the audience to see that she is knowledgeable in what
she is sharing with them as well as explaining that everyone in our society is
different, leaving no one the same as the other. No two individuals have the same
writing or the same way of communicating, therefore making every connection that
you have a “contact zone.”
While Mary Louise Pratt’s lecture and essay Arts of the Contact Zone could be
considered a “difficult” read or listen to some, her main point and argument of her
lecture was represented in a clear and efficient way. She expressed her opinions and
beliefs in a skillful manner by ensuring that she connected to her audience or
reader. By using personal experiences, such as a lighthearted story about her son,
she was able to connect to her audience on a personal level as well as an academic
level by using Guaman Poma’s story as well. The audience could hold many of the
values Pratt does, such as: family, literacy or overall academic studies. She gives
many examples and arguments as to why multicultural education will not only
broaden, but also ensures a better learning experience to students in their academic
studies.