Nuñez, 1

Perla Nuñez

Allison Bocchino

Writing 2

16 March 2020

A World in Translation

To challenge myself I chose to translate Cecilia L. Rideway’s “Why Status Matters For

Inequality'' into a poem. I have never been one to be creative with my writing, and choosing this

genre allowed me to attempt it. Although both the primary text and poem included similar ideas,

they were unique in their own way. Playing around with certain devices, I was able to include

Ridgeway’s message through the use of alliteration, personification, simile and a rhetorical

question to successfully translate the academic article into a condensed version for others to read.

Ridgeway's purpose for “Why Status Matters For Inequality,” was to bring light to a

problem causing inequality. Rideway felt that status was overlooked within the sociology

discourse community and “treated as a side topic in U.S. sociology.”1 Through Rideway’s use of

collecting research, she pointed out that what is seen as the weakest point to much of the

discourse community, in reality is the foundation for how inequality is created within a society.

Not to mention, Ridgeway explained how implicit assumptions people had on specific groups

were “shared by dominants and subdominants alike, legiti-mating the inequality (Jackman 1994;

Ridge- way and Correll 2006).”2 Using multiple sources within the discourse community, such as

Jackman and Correll, Ridgeway was able to gain the credibility she needed to state the claim she

1
L Ridgeway, “Why Status Matters for Inequality,” ​American Sociological Review 79,
​Cecilia
no.1 (2014): 2.

2
​Ridgeway, “Why Status,” 3.
 Nuñez, 2

was making and have her intended audience take notice of the problem. Even though the article

wasn’t jargon heavy and there were formatted subheadings included to facilitate the direction

Ridgeway went in her essay, it was still hard for the average reader to understand some of the

points being made, simply because we don’t have the background knowledge other sociologists

have on the topic of inequality.

I was overwhelmed with the information being given by Ridgeway and rereading wasn’t

of much help. Then I remembered Karen Rosenberg’s tips for reading scholarly articles and how

the introductions “present the main idea, and tell us why we should care,”3 and only then after

looking at the introduction was I able to grasp the concept Ridgeway was trying to explain.

Reviewing the conclusion, another trick suggested by Rosenberg, also helped pinpoint the idea

of status and its relationship to inequality. Furthermore, I was able to detect how no matter

whether you were the intended audience or not, Ridgeway expected action from the reader to

help solve the problem of inequality. Rideway stated how “we want to understand” inequality so

it could be unmade.4 The unison made with the use of “we” not only at the beginning of the

essay, but at the end as well, helped create her call to action to get the audience to help change

the ways of inequality. A similar technique seen in Janet Boyd’s “Muder!(Rhetorically

Speaking)”5 when the lawyer provided “an eloquent ​closure ​to his argument.” The wording

being used within the text appealed to the audience, with either a positive or negative association

towards the action the authors wished to see in their writings.

3
Karen Rosenberg, “Reading Games: Strategies For Reading Scholarly Sources,” ​Writing
Spaces: Readings on Writing ​Volume​ ​2, (2011): 216.
4
​Ridgeway, “Why Status,” 1.
5
​Janet Boyd, “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking),” ​Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing ​Volume
2, (2011): 99.
 Nuñez, 3

When turning over to a poem’s rhetorical devices, some of them were more dominant and

tended to differ when compared to a peer reviewed essay. Taking Robert Frost's “The Road Not

Taken,”6 Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,”7 and Pablo Neruda’s “If You

Forget Me,”8 I found common rhetorical devices to incorporate into my own poem. One of those

included the use of alliteration, as seen when Angelou wrote “fat worms waiting”9 in her fourth

stanza. I used this device to state inequality as being “deep, digging driving.” The use of

alliteration made it quick and easy for the readers to recite the words as they read through the

lines. In addition, this rhetorical device helped bring attention to these three descriptive words of

inequality because of the repetitive sound used, which in turn made readers realize how serious

inequality was being depicted. We know that Ridgeway was trying to bring awareness to this

problem and replicating the same sound within those few words really helped draw that

attention.

In the poem I also included the use of personification. This convention is very universal

when taking a look at poems, an example being in Neruda’s poem when he wrote “my love feeds

on your love.”10 His love was not literally eating away at his wife, rather Neruda’s feelings and

love for his wife were a reciprocation of what Neruda’s wife felt for him; if she loved him

Neruda would love her back even more. Throughout my own poem I made it a goal to personify

status beliefs, similar to how Neruda gave this human quality to his love. More specifically, I

mentioned how status “doesn’t praise variety.” Using this phrase I wished to show how the idea

6
​ obert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.” SparkNotes, January 2003.
R
7
​Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Poetry Out Loud​, Accessed March 4,
2020.
8
​Pablo Neruda, “If You Forget Me,” A Research Guide for Students​,​ April 2019.
9
Angelou, “I Know Why.”
10
​Neruda, “If You.”
 Nuñez, 4

of status within different groups doesn’t equally work in their favor, rather status satisfies a

specific group of people and brings a disadvantage to those who don’t fall under that category.

Furthermore, in addition to the use of personification on status in my poem I used a

simile. Looking at Neruda’s poem again, I liked when he described how wherever he went, he

was drawn to his wife “as if everything that exists...were little boats”11 taking him to her. I

applied the use of simile to my poem making a comparison of status belief and tree roots because

it is known that a tree is supported through the system of roots that lie beneath the surface, not

seen, but very much important for the survival of the tree. In a similar way, the status beliefs

people hold for certain groups become those roots that aren’t visible but are key in the making of

inequality within society. All the discussed rhetorical devices, along with the use of a rhetorical

question helped get my message about status across to the audience. Mike Bunn’s “How to Read

Like a Writer” helped me put myself in the mindset of Ridgeway to comprehend her use of

specific conventions, such as a call to action, and “consider the effect of those choices on

potential readers.”12 That mentality carried over and helped me decide that the best rhetorical

device to use for the poem, allowing for an audience’s maximum understanding of the topic, was

a rhetorical question. At the end of the poem I wrote “the time is now, with this knowledge will

you reroute?” Looking back at Ridgeway’s call to action I wanted to include something similar

in my poem, and this question made the reader make that decision. It became a way to actively

interact with the reader and have them evaluate their choice to the call of action.

11
Neruda, “If You.”
​
12
​Mike Bunn, “How to Read Like a Writer,” ​Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing​ Volume 2,
(2011): 72.
 Nuñez, 5

For the translation of the peer reviewed article to my poem, I changed most of the

original rhetorical conventions used. For example, instead of using jargon, I used personification

and a simile in the poem to convey the ideas Ridgeway explained from her research on

inequality. However, I decided to keep the call to action found in Ridgeway’s essay because she

wanted to be heard and wanted to see change in the way our society is built. Afterall, a poem’s

purpose, with the help of the conventions, is to relay a message the poet has about a topic. To

include the participation of the audience I placed the rhetorical question at the end of the poem

so it was the last thing readers took away from the translation, and it had similar effects as the

word “we” when Ridgeway used it.

To become distinguishable to any audience, poems follow a certain structure. They do

not necessarily have to be done in a rigid structure, most of the time people follow those

guidelines to facilitate their process of making a poem and get an idea of where to start. Focusing

more specifically on Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”13 I noticed that his poem included a rhyme

scheme of ABAAB within each stanza of the poem. As the poet for my translation, I did want to

include some form of rhyme, which is why I used Frost as an example out of the three examples

I had, considering he had a more visible pattern to the rhyme. I mirrored his structure of four

stanzas, each five lines long following an ABAAB rhyme scheme. This rhyme sequence was not

very restricting, and alike to the examples I found, the scheme allowed for the poem to be more

free flowing. When making a poem, poets pay attention to the iambic pentameter or whether

syllables are stressed or unstressed. I decided to bend those rules and not pay too close attention

to them as I wrote my translation. The reason being that I was more focused on getting the

13
​Robert Frost, “The Road.”
 Nuñez, 6

message across in a memorable way with rhyme, instead of focusing my time on mastering the

poem’s specific form of iambic pentameter. As Janet Boyd put it, sometimes “you may not even

consciously realize you are enacting certain rhetorical strategies while rejecting others.”14 In the

end I had to consider that most of the audience reading my poem would not pay as much

attention to a syllable being stressed or not, in comparison to them paying attention to the

underlying message I tried to highlight.

Translating an academic article into a non-academic article was a challenging process. I

had a rocky start when it came to incorporating rhetorical devices in the poem, but I think I did a

good job in getting Ridgeway’s research through to the audience. Although the information was

similar I played around with different conventions making them unique to the poem. If I had any

concerns, I looked back to readings done for class, and that helped guide the translation of the

chosen academic article.

14
​Boyd, “Murder!,”100.
 Nuñez, 7

Bibliography

Angelou, Maya. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Poetry Out Loud.​ Accessed March 4,

2020. https://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/caged-bird/.

Boyd, Janet. “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking).” ​Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing

Volume 2, (2011): 87-101.

https://gauchospace.ucsb.edu/courses/pluginfile.php/5892731/mod_resource/content/0/B

oyd--murder-rhetorically-speaking.pdf.

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” ​Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing​ Volume 2,

(2011): 71-86. http://writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/bunn--how-to-read.pdf.

Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” SparkNotes. January 2003.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-road-not-taken/.

​ pril 2019.
Neruda, Pablo. “If You Forget Me.” A Research Guide for Students​. A

https://www.aresearchguide.com/if-you-forget-me-by-pablo-neruda.html.

Ridgeway, Cecilia L. “Why Status Matters for Inequality.” ​American Sociological Review 79,

no.1 (2014): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122413515997.

Rosenberg, Karen. “Reading Games: Strategies For Reading Scholarly Sources.” ​Writing
 Nuñez, 8

Spaces: Readings on Writing ​Volume​ 2​ , (2011): 209-220.

https://gauchospace.ucsb.edu/courses/pluginfile.php/5892691/mod_resource/content/0/R

osenberg-Reading%20Games.pdf.