JOSE ESPARZA: So my name is Jose Esparza.
I'm a junior in mathematics and economics.
My focus is development economics,
so I got to know Michel's--
Professor DeGraff's work, because
of what he does with the MIT Haiti initiative.
And the reason I took this course
is because I thought that his efforts were very important,
and that it was an opportunity to improve the world
and I wanted to hear more of what he did,
and the theory of why he does what he does.
After taking this course, my perspective
of language and identity changed,
in that now I was able to see the connection
between the languages we speak, but also how that
ties into cultures, in general, and more importantly
to politics.
And in some sense, we can see a lot of the big things that
happen in society, like neocolonialism, or the effects
of institutions-- a lot of these things,
although they might be cloudy in some sort,
language is a good way to view the world.
One of the first essays was to look
our own life, or a biography through the lens of language.
And in studying how institutions interact with each other
through the sense of language opens up either
how some cultures are not taken as seriously
as others, how it tells you about the history
about the world.
And it taught me to see language as something
that ties a lot of things about humans together.
And it was just a different way to look at the world.