Two Articles

In this weeks readings I found the greatest connections between Robert Frost’s essay, “Our Contemporary Ancestors in the Southern Mountains,” and “Discourse and Racism,” by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl. They write in different styles and for different purposes. Frost writes specifically of his travels to share his observations with readers. Furthermore, Wodak and Reisigl analyze literature, and other writing, by people like Frost, to explain racism and the discourse that creates it. Wodak and Reisigl actually reference Van Dijk, another writer we read from this week, which contributes to their analysis of racism created through writing. Van Dijk discusses a “semantic memory” and “episodic memory” (Wodak 379). It is Frost’s episodic memory of his experience in the Appalachia region which contributes to the semantic memory of surrounding regions. Harney, who also wrote of travels in Appalachia, is another example of a contributor to America’s semantic memory. Frost’s noted episodic memory suggests the Appalachian region as far behind modern times (Frost 311). While he spins a positive outlook on the culture as unique and hospitable, he remains negative and prejudice when he claims, “how the mountains are to be enlightened, however, is a double problem” (Frost 318). His need to enlighten a full group of people displays a sense of “elite racism,” in which one group is superior to another because of socio-economic status or in this case cultural modernity (Wodak 372). I think the conversation between Frost, WOdak, and Reisigl would be interesting. The two would bring Frost to the realization that though he made clear efforts to encourage his reader to seek positives in the Appalachian way of life, he was still promoting stereotypes and convictions through literary discourse.