An Analysis Of Tongue-Tied

There are lots of examples of a silence of victims in the book. They beat Elie’s father, when he asked about the toilets. They all had to just stay in a train and not say anything at the beginning. They separated them on men and women and told them their new fake ages. They took all the things that mattered to them away. They took off their golden teeth. They shaved them, stripped them. They could not get more of any food. They had just to run from barrack to barrack even though they did know why. They hanged two people and people had to look at them and walk by. They were forced to run more than fifty miles to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. They physically abused Elie’s father at the end. In all those examples

Up to “half a year passed…” (Rodriguez, 287) until his teachers “…began to connect [his] behaviour with the difficult progress of [his] older sister and brother were making” (287). Note the fact that the teacher’s realization was because of his siblings and not because of his solitude, silent attitude. The message, as Anzaldua perfectly evokes in his short story, is that it’s our very “tongue [which] diminishes our sense of self” (298). A similar image Anzaldua depicts in ‘How to Tame a Wild Tongue’ – coincidently at the rather beginning of the text just like Rodriguez – is when the Anglo teacher said “If you want to be American, speak ‘American’. If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong” (295). On this occasion, Anzaldua’s mother also tells him off as she was “…mortified that [her son] spoke English like a Mexican” (295). Here, the pressure derives from the mom and the teacher, making Anzaldua feel out of place. He believes that “wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut” (295) emphasizing that one’s identity must be forgotten if he/she wants to learn another language (English), ultimately gaining a new identity. Another example of lack of identity recognition is when Kingston, in ‘Tongue Tied’, specifies that only the Chinese girls were left out when the class went to the auditorium. Kingston “…knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl” (284), hence, her self-esteem diminishes, she feels excluded from the class;

When Anzaldua says “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language” she wants you to feel every aspect of what she is saying. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” she persuades her readers to believe the way she feels and that she has went through hell to fight for what she believes in.

Silence happens a lot throughout the book because they all are scared so no one talks. Silence happens a lot when someone is being hanged because they can’t do anything about it or they will be hung with that person and no one want to be in that situation. Elle is forced not to talk about something an officer did because if Elle talked he would be put to death, so basically he didn’t have a cause to be silent at that point well he did but Elle didn’t want to die. Silence has a lot to do with self-preservation because in self-preservation they choose to be silent and not do anything about the

Secrets can destroy even the most respected people. Sometimes is not the secret itself that drives people into exhaustion, but the emotional baggage that comes with it. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Dimmesdale physically deteriorates because of his guilt caused by a dishonorable sin. The Puritan society in which the story is set discourages the idea of the private self, which Hawthorne shows by creating distinctions between the characters’ private and public lives, specifically Dimmesdale’s.

However, she also applies that first she had accepet herself as she is and this will allow her to move forward ‘I will no longer be made ashamed of existing, I will have my voice; Indian, Spanish, white. I will have serpents tongue my women voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice; I will overcome the tradition of silence.’ This also applies why the name of the title is How to tame a Wild Tongue. As she knows so many languages, she has to learn how to control the way she talks.

In their articles, Chang Rae-Lee and Amy Tan establish a profound ethos by utilizing examples of the effects their mother-daughter/mother-son relationships have had on their language and writing. Lee’s "Mute in an English-Only World" illustrates his maturity as a writer due to his mother’s influence on growth in respect. Tan, in "Mother Tongue," explains how her mother changed her writing by first changing her conception of language. In any situation, the ethos a writer brings to an argument is crucial to the success in connecting with the audience; naturally a writer wants to present himself/herself as reliable and credible (Lunsford 308). Lee and Tan, both of stereotypical immigrant background, use their

Reading response to “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” by Gloria Anzaldua. In Gloria Anzaldua’s 1987 article, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she expresses some of the cultural struggles and lifestyles of the central American culture that Americans do not think about, let alone know about. She starts off illustrating an experience she had at the dentist office which triggered many thoughts and feelings about her culture. The Dentist claimed her tongue was “strong and stubborn,” in other words, “you need to tame your tongue.” She then thought back at a time, in her childhood, where she was punished for not “taming her tongue.” Only, this recollection was of a time she hadn’t tamed her native Spanish speaking tongue, which set off her memory of how her family and culture felt about children speaking at all. Gloria went on to tell about the different dialects of the Spanish language such as, how each differed, how each was generated, what the culture was like behind them, and which ones she closely identified with. Those who speak different dialects, from those in other parts of North America, have developed this feeling of isolation due to the views of those who speak the more formal dialects. Those who speak a more formal dialect may judge someone who speaks an Americanized version of Spanish dialect such as Chicano Spanish because it is seen as improper or culturally incorrect; therefore, many Spanish speakers may resort to speaking English with one another to avoid embarrassment or

Characters in the Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth scarcely feel guilt - with two exceptions: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In this essay let's consider their guilt-problem.

In Gloria Anzaldúa’s piece, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she explores the complex relationship that ties identity to language. She describes how childhood and adult experiences shape who she is today. She provides a glimpse into the life of a person who speaks a minority language in a majority population. She begins the essay by recounting an experience of a dentist capping a tooth and trying in vain to control her tongue. He becomes frustrated with her as she pushes out the swabs of cotton, instruments, and other implements with her tongue. She shares this story because it represents the role society plays in systematically pressuring those who speak minority dialects to adopt the majority language. This social manipulation can be direct such as shaming someone who speaks their native language or it can be indirect such as providing access to economic benefits such as a higher-paying job for those who assimilate.

Scholar, Gloria Anzaldúa, in her narrative essay, “How To Tame A Wild Tongue’, speaks her many experiences on being pressured on what language to use. She then expresses how the discrimination made her to realize the ugly truth--that people reject languages that aren’t their own. She adopts logos, ethos and pathos in order to appeal toward her audience who is anyone who is not bilingual. One of the perspectives she takes on in her piece clearly expresses the relationship between language and identity and how it creates a conflict between her and the world.

Anzaldua begins her fight in “how to tame a wild tongue” by sharing her experience with language. She goes on to shares times where she was discriminated for the language she spoke and how others would try to silence not just her voice but her culture. She goes into depth of this topic by using visionary writing along with her emotion capturing the audience’s feelings and attention. She uses metaphor of someone trying to take her culture away by stating, “We’re going to have to control your tongue,” the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode. The dentist is cleaning out my roots,”(206). The dentist being a person who is not a minority is trying to get her to confine in a culture that is not hers, by forcing her to speak a different language that would erase her roots.

Gloria Anzaldua, author of the article " How to tame a Wild Tongue", expresses very strong views on how she feels her native Chicano Spanish language needs to be preserved in order to maintain cultural unity when used as a private form of communication. Her statement, " for a people who cannot identify with either standard (formal, Castilian) Spanish, nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language?" suggests that despite the societal pressures of needing to learn more formal and ‘properly' accepted English and Spanish, the very nature of the Chicano language is a unique creation of acceptance, through language within the Mexican culture. She is opposed to assimilation on

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

This oppressive nature results in an inferiority complex being developed by the narrator. The narrator is unable to express her opinion