Diana L. Eck is an American scholar of religious studies and professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University. She is also the Director of <em>The Pluralism Project</em> at Harvard.
In this excerpt, the order in which she presents the items serves a rhetorical purpose. The items are listed in order of how "accepted" they are in mainstream American society. Christianity (a cross) is well-accepted, while Judaism (yarmulke) is still omnipresent, but more contentious. As she goes on, the list would appear more and more exotic to American readers. The question therefore is successful in testing the limits of religious plurality.
Answer:
different ethnicities can different languages and often times when you know a certain language that puts you in a certain group of people
Explanation:
knowing a language means that you can converse with people that know the same language and share ideas with them. If i speak english and i have to choose wether or not to talk to a person that knows english or a person that speaks spanish, im going to talk to the person that speaks english because its easier to share your ideas with them. technically, knowing the language puts you in the group of speaking that language and people never want to go the hard way to try and talk to the person that wants to speak spanish. not to mention the fact that when someone knows your langauage, you feel more comfortable around them. If i am asian and I speak cantonese, but im in the middle of a english speaking crowd, i definatly feel more comfortable if i meet someone that can speak cantonese as well. Does that help??
