A Rhetorical Analysis Of Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

When Tan was younger, she was embarrassed over her mom's "broken" English, a term she now has a distaste for, she believed the quality of her mom's English was imperfect, so Tan's thoughts became imperfect. Tan's view of her own mother was limited because of her linguistic struggles. She thought her mother was only as good as he English she spoke which Tan later on reveals was an inaccurate thought process, and this only causes her to feel shame for her actions. Moreover, Tan, through the rhetorical appeals, provides statistics to further develop her claim of the limitations imperfect English can impose on society. "

The author states, “I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language- the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.” In paragraphs 1 and 2, the authors begins by tellings the readers that she has always loved language and how it is used by people in everyday life and she uses daily language as a part of her work. In paragraph 3 the explains how during one her talks to a large group of people she realizes how she also uses different Englishes. Amy realized this because when she was talking to the group her mom had come to listen to her and she thought about how she talked to her mom compared to how she talks to other people, in particular, the large group of people. This opened her eyes to a whole other realm on how she uses her English while talking to her mom with “broken” English the one she grew up with, and then speaking to others with standard English that she was taught in school and in books. Amy quoted what her mother said about a political gangster that showed up at her mother’s wedding. To me it was very hard to understand and had to reread it twice to try to make out what she was trying to say. I am not the only one who thinks that. “You should know that my mother’s expressive command of English belies how much she actually understand.” Amy explains that her mom can read “ the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease,” but Amy can’t understand them. Amy’s mom can understand a lot of English but when she speaks English, some of Amy’s friends can barely understand any of it. Amy states that some only understand 80 to 90 percent while others understand none of what she is saying when she talks. The upside to this is that this formed Amy to see things differently in the world. When Amy was younger she was ashamed of her mother’s “broken” or

In “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan wrote about broken English. It catches audiences who speaks broken English or a person who has a family member who speaks broken English. Tan also speaks to another group of people who have no idea about broken English or they don’t know the people who speaks broken English.

Amy Tan’s literacy narrative “Mother Tongue” is about the different dialects of English, she is familiar with. She explains that her intelligence is judged by the way she speaks. Amy Tan, explains memories from her life where she encounters many forms of English. Her mother, a Chinese immigrant spoke “broken English.” She describes her mother as someone who was able to understand English, well the mother claims that she understands everything, but when it came to speaking, she spoke without the correct grammar. Due to her mothers broken English, Amy Tan has adapted to the type of English her mother speaks, their own type of English language. Tan feels as if the English she is speaking with it outside world is more complex than the English she

Mother Tongue is a story that describes how Amy Tan’s mother was treated unfairly because of her “broken English”. As the second generation of Chinese immigrants, Tan faces more problems than her peers do. Her mom, who speaks “limited” English, needs Tan to be her “translator” in order to communicate with the native English speakers. Tan has felt ashamed of her mother “broken” language at first. She then contemplates her background affected her life and her study. However, she changes her thought at the end since she realizes things behind language might be more valuable than language itself sometimes. Through the various different literary devices and rhetorical strategies such as the ethos, pathos, and logos appeals, as well as a

The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.

She had to keep all these English’s separate because each was like its own language. If Amy were to mix them, it would become confusing and wouldn’t have made sense to her or her mother as they had grown accustomed to this language and communication. One language was the English she spoke to her mother. Amy had to simplify her English when speaking to her mother; Amy would speak the basic ideas of what she was trying to say to make it easier for her mother to comprehend. For example she said, “Not waste money that way” to her mother one day; she would even say this to her husband because it was routine to her to do so. When she made a speech once, she felt as if the way she was speaking was wrong because her mother was in the audience. A second English language to Amy was how her mother used English with her. Tan describes her mother’s English as “broken” or “fractured” language. This type of English affected Tan greatly; she said it limited her possibilities in life and also affected her performances in school when she took achievements tests, IQ tests, and the SAT because it limited her language skills. Another type of language that she grew up with was Amy’s translation of her mother’s Chinese. She described it as “watered down” and yet sometimes she would grow in confidence when she was on the phone with people because of this. However, later her self-esteem would lower because of

Ms. Amy Tan recalled in her article “Mothers Tongue” how her mother had not been treated with respect because she spoke broken English. As she looked back over the life of her mother, she realized that this had been a lifelong frustration for her. She wrote how she was frustrated with the term "broken". Her mother was an intelligent woman; therefore, she was not broken by the definition of broken. She even recalls one time where she had to pretend to be her mother on the phone because her mother was not taken seriously. Tan used people wrongfully labeled, personal experience, and intelligence was not based on vocabulary to explain that people need to be treated with respect.

Tan’s attitude towards her mother’s English begins with embarrassment and humiliation. Growing up in an immigrant family which speaks imperfect English, Tan witnesses many discriminations that her mother has encountered in department stores or at banks, those experiences help to shape Tan’s opinion to her mother’s English. For example, Tan states that “[she] was ashamed of [her mother’s] English. [She] believed that [her mother’s] English reflected the quality of what [her] mother had to say” (508). In young Amy’s opinion, her mother’s expressions and thoughts are broken and imperfect like the way she speaks, and she believes that linguistic expression is linked to a person’s intelligence. As a result, she was ashamed of her mother in public because of her fractured English.

Amy talked about how people don’t understand her mother English and the main reason why they don’t understand her English is cause her tongue. “Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking Chinese.” (Tan pg.1)

In Amy Tan’s narrative, “Mothers Tongue”, Tan speaks about the unique dialect that she and her mother share. Only she could understand and conversations with her mother and understand every word she is saying. Tan writes about how she grew up with the variations of English; the perfect English that she spoke to the public, and the broken English she used with her mother. Tan writes that from a young age she was very embarrassed by the limited knowledge of English and how that “… reflected the quality of what she had to say.” (Tan, pg. 635) Tan reflects that with her mother’s limitations, she had to talk on her mother’s behalf just to have others hear what her mother had to say, Amy recalls a time where she was called to basically interpret

First of all, Amy Tan uses ethos to present the idea that social expectations must not negatively influence one's perception. She makes her argument by using rhetorical devices such as, “I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts”. She felt that standardized tests could not accurately determine a person’s intelligence. Amy Tan states how people have different ways of thinking and different types of intelligence. Therefore, it really is kind of unfair, for lack of a better term. Tan recalls all the English that she grew up with her mom, and what she was taught affected her life. Throughout the story, she describes her relationship with her mother, who speaks “broken” English, and how her perception of language has changed due to her mother. She also successfully manages to explain that language barriers in the U.S have limited amounts of success for non-English speaking residents. Because her "mother tongue" is the English she uses while she is in her first world, her

In the essay, “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan lays out examples of noticing the different Englishes in her life and how she incorporates them into her writing. She also breaks down the different versions of English that have taken root in her life. Tan notes that she includes all the Englishes of her life in her book, The Joy Luck Club. Tan, the daughter of immigrants, learned to navigate between the “perfect” English of her professional life and the “broken” English of her youth. The author’s main claim of there being no perfect way of speaking English is one that can be easily recognized because Tan gives clear examples of the diverse versions of English in her life, she pinpoints moments in which she sees the differences and discovers how to accept and acclimate these differences to her life and career.

Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability to speak the way society expects. Disallowing others to prove their misconceptions of her, Tan exerted herself in excelling at English throughout school. She felt a need to rebel against the proverbial view that writing is not a strong

Tan’s attitude towards her mother’s English begins with embarrassment and humiliation. Growing up in an immigrant family which speaks imperfect English, Tan witnesses many discriminations that her mother has encountered in department stores or at banks, those experiences help to shape Tan’s opinion to her mother’s English. For example, Tan states that “[she] was ashamed of [her mother’s] English. [She] believed that [her mother’s] English reflected the quality of what [her] mother had to say” (508). In young Amy’s opinion, her mother’s expressions and thoughts are broken and imperfect like the way she speaks, and she believes that linguistic expression is linked to a person’s intelligence. As a result, she was ashamed of her mother in public because of her fractured English.