Anzaldúa How To Tame A Wild Tongue Thesis

Thesis: All three authors portray the voice of many people, who, on a daily basis, are underprivileged of speaking their own language, thus, emphasizing onto the lives of linguistic minority students around the world and how they struggle to cope in school and at home.

He does not believe as Anzaluda does that you have to create your own language if you cannot identify with more formal forms of acceptance. Although he admits it is heartbreaking to have shared fewer words with his parents because of the language barrier, he thinks his choice in learning and practicing English was necessary. In fact, the more he learned

Throughout her essay, Anzaldua use logos to try and present this variety of language and the combinations that are there. For example she states, “And because we are complex, heterogeneous people,we speak many languages.” From their Anzaldua went on to name different types of languages and this helped the reader understand the many language are presented to her. Anzaldua then states, “My “home” tongues are the languages I speak with my sister and brothers, with my friends.”

Throughout this essay, Anzaldua hold a prideful yet informative tone. When she tells her stories from her childhood, the tone changes to disbelief as she remembers all hardships she had to go through. Anzaldua gives another example of when her teachers mispronounced her name and as she tried to correct them they told her “If she wants

The rhetorical situation of Gloria Anzaldua’s, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” from her book Borderlands/La Frontera, is the most important piece to her argument. A writer’s rhetorical situation is the use of the elements of the rhetor, audience, text, medium, context and exigence. Through the correct use of these pieces, a writer is able to greatly strengthen their argument and persuasive abilities. In her passage, Gloria Anzaldua is speaking to the unfair and unjust treatment of Spanish speaking children growing up in the United States educational system. These are not just kids who have moved here from a Spanish speaking country, but even those born in the United States that grew up speaking Spanish because of their family’s culture. Through her writing she wants to bring this into light to induce change and help children of the future be able to learn in an environment where they are also able to comfortable speak their own language. She is not looking for them to be able to speak their own language in an American school just because she wants to be difficult. In her eyes, your language is part of your identity of self. And without your language, you are also losing part of yourself. Again, she expresses and increases the persuasiveness of these ideas through the use of her rhetorical situation, which includes the rhetor, audience, text, medium, context and exigence.

Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan are two bilingual writers. Rodriguez comes from a Latin background where both his parents speak Spanish. Tan is a child of Chinese parents. Though they share some of the same situations; each has a different way of portraying it. This gives the readers two different aspects of being bilingual. Rodriguez told his story in Aria: a Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood. Tan told hers in Mother Tongue. In spite of the fact that they both wrote about their experiences of being bilingual, they told their stories were for very different reasons.

Anzaldúa identifies her cultures struggle into adapting to the community she lives in. She begins her challenges with the incident of the dentist in order to emphasize her concern, as in not her own mouth, but more specifically their language. If you want to be American, speak ‘American’ (Anzaldúa 471). She is

Activist, Gloria Anzaldua’s narrative excerpt “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” She goes into depth of ethnic identity, while knocking down walls of linguistic and identity down. How one would identify themselves while broadcasting the struggles any person with culture has felt. She uses ethos, pathos, and logos alongside all five senses. Making the reader feel as though they witness the struggles she went through if not witness then actually experienced. Anzaldua’s thesis is that language is a part of one’s identity. It is what makes a person who they and connects them to their roots. People shouldn't let others try to tame their tongue or cut off their native language; because once they do and are given that power they can disconnect the person from their culture and roots.

Although I can’t specifically relate to Gloria Anzaldúa’s struggle between her languages in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” I can relate to her “kind of dual identity” in which she identifies with neither Anglo-American cultural values nor Mexican cultural values (1566). Being half white, half Chinese, I struggle identifying as either identity, especially because my mom (who is Chinese) never learned Cantonese and largely became Americanized in her childhood. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in when racial and ethnic identity are so significant in America and when I must interact with the world as part of both the majority and the marginalized. Considering my own struggle and the conflict Anzaldúa describes, it became clearer to me the way race relations in American not only marginalize people of color but train our consciousnesses to damage ourselves. Before I turn back to Anzaldúa, a novel I’ve recently read, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams has also been on my mind, particularly in Godwin’s portrayal of how police surveillance transforms us into agents of our own oppression. Although Caleb is a white man, he also experiences a split consciousness as his values and characteristics are whittled away by the paranoia of constant surveillance.

In Gloria Anzaldua’s letter “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers” she delivers her message of being a third world woman writer and how there is a constant struggle between conforming to gain a voice in the world of writing and staying true to your culture. She pulls pieces from her own life experiences and works from other looked over women writers of color to make her point and connect to her audience letting them know she is part of their plight to be heard. In my rewrite of the essay “A Letter in “tongues”” I changed the delivery from a letter to a free verse poem condense Anzaldua 's message from Writing Women of color to just discriminated women writers just in general. They both focused use of pathos and ethos but mine leans more towards ethos pointing out that the dominant ideology of english writing being the only way to be heard as a writer that it is denying the voice of writing women of color and that is ethically wrong not what has happened to herself to invoke feeling.

The main argument that both Anzaldua and Baldwin makes are very similar, and in these aspects, both are as equally strong. Both authors have experienced cultural and language discrimination throughout their lives, and wish to make a change. Anzaldua argues that Chicano English should not be considered an inferior language, while Baldwin claims that Black English should not be considered an inferior form of English. Anzaldua and Baldwin address the oppressors of their language and condemns them for marginalizing Chicano English and Black English, respectively. They also empower those who can relate to their situation, and encourage them to step up to be equal to that of speakers of other languages. While the main message and purpose of each author is clear, their delivery differs vastly.

“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is published in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New MEstiza (1987), by Gloria Anzaldua and “the book talks about how she is concerned with many kinds of borders--between nations, cultures, classes, genders, and languages.” Anzaldua gives many examples of how she felt when being classified as a Chicana. Her thesis in this is that she is “arguing for the ways in which identity is intertwined with the way we speak and for

As Anzaldua writes her experiences, she creates tone as passionate and determination for what she stands for throughout the whole the essay. She wants to convince her audience that language is not just a tool of communication, but an extension of an identity; “I am my language, I cannot take pride in myself (until) I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate”(211). Notice how she compares language and treats it as herself. This gives a sense of life giving to the language. Furthermore, explaining the quote, she wishes to break off the conformity that society compressed her into.

I have chosen “Mother Tongue” for the subject of my essay. I chose this essay because Amy Tan has a unique writing style which has tone that is clear and identifiable. Tan makes her arguments in a way that is easily understood. While her tone is sometimes humorous and captivating, it still clarifies some serious issues. These qualities among others leave Tan’s work to be desired by almost any reader because her tone and style are both genuine and upfront. This essay will talk about how Tan’s work in her essay “Mother Tongue” uses several different styles and tones to make her point of regarding the differences of her communications with her

Firstly, thank you for your comment, Professor Avellaneda. Language learning is more about the theoretical knowledge such as grammatical rules, also a conscious method of learning, but I would really like to explore the topic of identity. The direct impact that Amber’s Spanish speaking abilities have on molding her identify as someone who’s bilingual and this allows her to connect with her culture and heritage.