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The birth of a nation

The most memorable writing in eighteenth-century America was done by the founding fathers, the men who led the American Revolution of 1775-1783 and wrote the constitution of 1989. But none of them were writers of fiction. Rather, they were practical philosophers, and their most typical product was the political pamphlet. They shared the European Enlightenment belief that human reason could understand both nature and man. Unlike the Puritans – who saw man as a sinful failure – the Enlightenment men were sure man could improve himself. They wanted to create a happy society based on justice and freedom.

The writings of Benjamin Franklin (1706 -1790) show the Enlightenment spirit in America at its best and most optimistic. His style is quite modern and, even today, his works are a joy to read. At the same time, there’s something “anti-literary” about Franklin. He had no liking for poetry and felt that writing should always have a practical purpose.

Almanacs, containing much useful information for farmers and sailors (about the next year’s weather, sea tides, etc.), were a popular form of practical literature. Together with the Bible and the newspaper, they were the most-widely read and often the only reading matter in most Colonial households. Franklin made his Almanac interesting by creating the character “Little Richard”. Each new edition continued a simple but realist story about Richard, his wife and family. He also included many “sayings” about saving money and working hard. Some of those are known to most Americans today:

Lost time is never found again.

God helps those who help themselves.

In 1757 Franklin collected together the best of his sayings and published The Way to Wealth. This little book became one of the best-sellers of the Western World and was translated into many languages.

(Peter High. Outline of American Literature . Essex, Longman.1996. Adaptado)

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Culture is really an integral part of the interaction between language and thought. Cultural patterns, customs, and ways of life are expressed in language; culture-specific world views are reflected in language. Each culture has at its disposal a particular range of colours, illustrating its particular world view on what color is and how to identify color. The African Shona and Bassa peoples, for example, have fewer color categories than speakers of European languages and they break up the spectrum at different points, as shown below:

Of course, the Shona or Bassa are able to perceive and describe other colors, in the same way that an English speaker might describe a “dark bluish green”, but the labels which the language provides tend to shape the person’s overall cognitive organization of color and to cause varying degrees of color discrimination. Eskimo tribes commonly have as many as seven different words for snow to distinguish among different types of snow (falling snow, snow on the ground, fluffy snow, wet snow, etc.), whereas certain African cultures in the equatorial forests of Zaire have no word at all for snow.

(Douglas Brown. Principles of language learning and teaching. 5th ed. Longman,2000. Adaptado)

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