Essays: Spanish Language

He argues that the Latinos and other bilingual people need to stand up for themselves and their culture and not allow the more dominant languages to overtake them. With the forced assimilation of Spanish speakers into the English culture, the Spanish language is slowly dissolving. Many non bilingual people want to eliminate all other languages beside the dominant language of English. Espada writes, “There are too many in this country who would amputate the Spanish tongue.” (4). By eradicating the Spanish language many bilingual speakers will lose both their sense of identity and their voice in the world. Espada claims that bilingual people want to learn English, but they also want to preserve their cultural identity. He explains how non-English speakers want to learn English, but continue to speak their native language; “I have never met a single person who didn 't want to learn English. What they want to do is also retain their own language, culture, and identity.” (9-10). By retaining their own culture and learning English they are able to participate in both cultures.

In Richard Rodriguez's essay , “ Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood ” he writes about how he struggled as a child who only spoke Spanish but lives in a society where the “public” language is English . He believes that speaking proper English will somehow help him fit into society and find his identity. Throughout the essay he contrast the Spanish language identity and English language identity. As a young boy, Rodriguez finds consolation and safety in his home where they only speak Spanish. He feels that he only has a true identity when he is at home surrounded by those who speak the same language as him

Rodriguez offers a different standpoint on bilingualism, and an argument he presents is that one must be willing to give up part of their native ways when learning a language to fit into the public. Rodriguez considered Spanish a private language and English a public one. This perception made him reluctant to learn English, but at the same time, it motivated him to become a part of the public by learning its language. Rodriguez uses his family life as an example of his native identity. He was not an English speaker when he was young, but upon learning the language, he drifted away from his family, and describes it rather frankly: “I was an American citizen. But the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then. . . . No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness . . . . When I arrived home there would often be

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

There are both positive and negative aspects of learning a language, but people are likely to equalize two sides and try not to lose the relationships with their family and the society. Amy Tan, in “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez in “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” explain how they viewed their private and public languages through their experiences and how they managed these two languages and established themselves in the society. Tan initially felt ashamed of her private language and favored the public language; however, in the end she showed that she could manage the balance between the languages and finally utilized both in public. On the other hand, Rodriguez preferred his private language which made him feel comfortable;

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.

According to Americans, her language is considered a bastard language and that it is illegitimate. This is something that she takes to heart because her language is so important to her and it is so close to her and her family. Anzaldua shows this in the narration and structure of her writing. Her reading is bilingual instead of just in English. She will write a whole sentence in English but change one or two words in the sentence to Spanish. An example is when she says, “Often with mexicanas y latinos we’ll speak English as a neutral language” (64). Here is just a small example of how she includes her Spanish language in her English text. There are many different times when Anzaldua does this in her reading. This is something that may confuse an English reader with no Spanish experience. Often times when I came across words in Spanish I got confused and almost embarrassed because I had no clue what she was trying to say. I think this is a great way to show readers how she felt as a Chicano trying to learn a whole new language. Anzaldua’s strategy of narration and structure of the text really catches a reader’s eye. She also italicizes any Spanish words that she includes in her text. This is just another way of showing the audience how important her language is to her. Another strategy she uses in her writing is how she splits up her story. She has many

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.

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

In Richard Rodriguez's essay , “ Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood ” he writes about how he struggled as a child who only spoke Spanish language but lives in a society where the “public” language is English . He believes that speaking proper English will somehow help him fit into society and find his “true” identity. Throughout the essay he contrast the Spanish language identity and English language identity. As a young boy, Rodriguez finds consolation and safety in his home where they only speak Spanish. He feels that he only has a true identity when he is at home surrounded by those who speak the same language as him . On the contrary , he becomes trapped and disoriented when not being able to speak / understand the English language . He feels as if he is not part of “their world” and has no identity in society. By comparing and contrasting Spanish language identity and English language identity . Rodriguez's essay is an example that speaking different languages should not make anyone choose an identity . In fact being able to speak and understand multiple languages in his case Spanish and English makes the language a part of his identity, but with two different sides .

In defining one’s identity, many different factors are considered; such as one’s nationality, characteristic, personality, ability, experience, religion, and etc. Especially for those people who live in America, so called country of immigration, has much more complicated identities than those Asian country people where mixed people are rarely noticed. Thinking about the concept of identity, some people easily categorized themselves as simple factors and terms which could describe their surface; white, black, Asian, European, pretty, ugly, nice, mean and so on and so forth. And that is the most point where majority people stopped to list their identities from exploring more in complicated range. However, there are many people who dig more than common people; one great example would be Denise Chavez, who is the author of the novel called Loving Pedro Infante, who kept asking herself about her identity to approach more accurate and clear ideas. In her work, reader could see the confusion of Tere, the main character of the novel, went through her life as Latin-American female in dealing with finding one’s true identity and how she accept her as who she really is. Denise Chavez, who is obviously Latin-American lady, mirror her own life experience through the character she created and introduce to readers about tough life she lived in America as Mejicana. The main character of this novel have a clear understanding and strong idea about herself throughout the novel, even if

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.

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.

Unconsciously, we all speak different languages; we categorize the way we speak by the environment and people at which we are speaking too. Whenever a character enters an unfamiliar environment, they experiment with language to find themselves and understand reality. For immigrants, language is a means to retain one’s identity; however, as they become more assimilated in their new communities their language no longer reflects that of their identity but of their new cultural surroundings. When an immigrant, immigrates to a new country they become marginalized, they’re alienated from common cultural practices, social ritual, and scripted behavior. It’s not without intercultural communication and negotiation

“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, by Gloria Anzaldua, is a very expressive story about a Mexican American women’s struggle to preserve her culture. Her main fight revolves around a struggle to keep a form of Spanish, called “Chicano Spanish”, a live. In the short story she says, " for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castilian) Spanish, or standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language?"(page 55). She is stating that despite what the societies both Mexican and American want her to do she will not concede defeat. The American Society would like her to speak proper English, while the Mexican Society wishes she would speak proper