Website design By BotEap.comIn Introduction to a Rhizome the authors define a rhizome as capable of “connecting any point with any other point, and its features are not necessarily linked to features of the same nature; it brings into play very different sign regimes, and even states without sign”. (21) They apply this idea to literature and language and, in the process, deconstruct widely held ideas on both topics.

Website design By BotEap.comAt the beginning of the chapter, the authors state: “…there is no language per se, nor linguistic universals, just a multitude of dialects, patois, slang, and specialized languages.” (7) Since the capacity for language is something we are born with, then no beginning or end can be attributed to language that makes it a perfect example of a rhizome. According to the authors, rhizomes lack beginnings or endings and have the ability to connect ideas and objects that seem to have no connection, no common denominator, so to speak. The language does exactly that.

Website design By BotEap.comWhen you take a group that speaks one language and another group that speaks a different language, to communicate, they create a pidgin language. Pidgin is a very basic way of communicating, however when your offspring is born that pidgin language becomes a whole language with its own rules and syntax etc. Much of what we think of as the Creole language is formed in this way.

Website design By BotEap.comLater in the essay the authors discuss American Literature and how it represents the idea of ​​the Rhizome. Unlike other more homogeneous cultures, America is a salad bowl of people, culture and ideas. We are the land of immigrants from almost every continent, together with an indigenous population that managed to survive the bulk of the immigrants.

Website design By BotEap.comAll of these seemingly disparate pieces have come together to form a national identity as “American,” but all the elements are different: different cultures, languages, religions. Since our country is so different, that difference would also find its way into our literature.

Website design By BotEap.comThere is no single American identity that one can be inspired by, unlike in English literature, there can be an English experience or a French experience in French literature or even a Japanese experience as far as Japan is concerned. Our American literature would draw from all of those aspects of America: the cultures, the language, the foods to create a writeable American identity, this Americanness because rhizomatic in its creation as it takes these different ideas and turns them into in our America, our literature.