Erin Ashley Mink Garvey WRD Personal Statement 7 September 2009

Languages unyielding power can erect indivisible walls and guide contentious opinions to compromise. Some individuals use language to spread hatred, while others use its healing, redemptive power to ameliorate the worlds egregious ills. Nestled amidst these extremes are people who simply do not care to pay attention to their language use and the more academic types who understand languages labyrinthine qualities and painstakingly select their words as though each cost them their souls. My own affair with language is an amalgamation of these portrayals, though I strive to be among the academic types. My fascination of, and utter respect for, language, discourse, and those sufficiently adept in each calls me to continue my studies in DePauls Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse (WRD) program. Education has become as entrenched in my identity as has my long-standing love for books, reading, and writing. Since I have passed the halfway mark in my International Public Service (IPS) program, beginning my WRD degree has become even more important to my longrange career goals. After I successfully complete the WRD program, I plan to use my adept writing skills to pursue a Ph.D., likely in the humanities or education, allowing me to begin a career in research or education. Should I remain an educator, I want to continue to work with diverse constituents, either in the USA or abroad, and help them pursue their educational aspirationsby either being in front of the classroom or behind the scenes, researching methods and practices that would make higher education accessible to everybody. Instructing ESL to recent immigrants to Chicago, orienting recent refugee arrivals, and acclimating underrepresented constituents in American higher education to the college experience all have been extremely rewarding for me, affording me many challenging opportunities to nurture my skills as a cross-cultural, reflective, education practitioner. Thus, the WRD program will be an excellent avenue through which I can marry my research and education interests. Moreover, my academic careers have given me much insight into languages implications on people and their identity formations. As an undergraduate language doublemajor, I routinely analyzed how a persons linguistic and discourse capabilities influenced her identity. My professors stressed to focus not only on what someone said or did not say, but also, on how she said it. As an IPS graduate student, I have applied my literary knowledge of identity construction to my work with various civil society organizations, frequently noting how each group uses precise language and very specific discourse to achieve its goals. My experiences have shown me, for example, that a refugee non-profit uses very different language and discourse practices than does an American higher education institution, probably because their goals and identities are vastly different. Additionally, language is not immune to politics, making our full understanding of languages use and intricacies even more urgent. Language is elementary bedrock on which identities stand, and because both language and

Erin Ashley Mink Garvey WRD Personal Statement 7 September 2009

discourse are such powerful, political tools, it behooves language learners and users to know how to use them.