Mexamerican dream

The notion space and exchange

First of all I would like to give a definition of exchange and space. An exchange is when you give something and you receive something else in return. Spaces are the places where these exchanges happen. It can be geographical or symbolic places. Places are occupied by all the societies (I could not understand that sentence). Spaces can also be the interactions between (the) people. First of all, I am going to talk about the American and Mexican dream, then I will talk about the immigration. Finally, we will talk about the new advertising language (because "lingo" is a Spanglish word) “Spanglish”.

The Mexamerican Dream

First, what is the American dream? It is an ideal vision of the USA as a country with no racism, no discrimination, where everyone is equal, gets a good job, a better life, personal happiness, material comfort and so on and so forth... The government helps the poorest citizens, with housing, health care, education and employment incentives... Then in the recording we listened to in class, we learnt that the Mexican dream is to leave Mexico and come to the US in order to find a job, to improve their income over the years, to get papers, to bring their family, build something in the US, then go back to Mexico to finally retire there.

The Minority

The document we studied in class was a cover from a very famous American magazine: TIME magazine, for a special issue on immigration in the US. On it we could see a woman’s face that represents the “new face of America”. She represents the mix of several faces of people from different culture. The message is that the USA is a multicultural country. In the comic strip we studied in class, the typical white American man thinks that the government has to work on solutions to get better living conditions, access to health care and education for minorities, because he is becoming a minority in his own country. On the one hand, having a strong minority in a country can have advantages because they bring new cultural elements (regarding food, traditions, language and clothes) and diversity, immigrants enrich the culture of the host country. It makes people more open-minded. On the other hand, it can have drawbacks because they take more space (over population), more resources and do not share common values that keep the country united.

Spanglish, the new advertising lingo

Spanglish is the mix between Spanish and English. We listened to a show about it. Spanglish is not something new for people living near the frontier with Mexico but for 10 years now it has become a new language used by marketers to sell more. the two males are speaking about marketers using Spanglish to expand their target audience, to raise their productivity and their profits. The point of view of the author is not neutral as his message is only positive. Spanglish is only positive. Spanglish is just going to enrich culture and bring more and more money to the country. He doesn't talk about the negative implications, like for example

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