Features And Formation From A Sociolinguistic Perspective

Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Dennis Baron’s “Who Owns Global English” both highlight important points in regards to language. While Amy Tan discusses her own mother’s native tongue in a more reflective manner, Dennis Baron compares the use of English on a global standard. Though both have similar messages, the two pieces also differ in their overall themes/arguments.

Language is a beautiful tool that can be used to unify or divide. Language brings people together but it can also tear them apart. In “Mute in an English Only World”, Chang-Rae Lee writes about how his mother was impaired from doing simple tasks such as going to the store alone because she could not speak English. Second, in “Lingua Franchise”, by Charles Foran, he shows how English is unifying people across the globe.

This English barrier in regards to employment is also benefited by the ethnic residential concentration within Cabramatta. Fellow community members can provide job opportunities that suit migrant or non-English speaking workers in workplaces that also speak that language, including local shops and warehouses. See Figure 3 below- the delivery driver in this photo speaks Vietnamese and has poor English skills. He works for his Vietnamese cousin and delivers to Vietnamese store holders. This reveals that the ethnic residential concentration in Cabramatta has created a job opportunity where there otherwise may have not have been in other areas for someone with such poor English skills.

In the examining and writing my analysis of the article Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, I hope to appeal to an audience that wishes to expand their knowledge of the cultural use of various languages and their social impacts. In this case, the language would be English and the culture would be that of Asian-Americans. I would think that this work, and the analysis of, would primarily be of interest to those in academic or research fields of sociology and language. I would hope the reader of my analysis would be interested in gaining insight into how using a “broken” English system heavily influences one’s communication and feeling towards those outside of your culture. The analysis would benefit the reader by

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

The English language has many tongues. From the 1500’s where people started migrating to the thirteen colonies to today where America is surrounded by immigration. From the beginning of history, society has been shaping English and its quality. It’s shown in Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” the varying ways one speaks them, regardless of being the same language. The author’s mother is being discriminated against due to speaking a different English from the proper form of English. Amy uses her personal experiences to contribute to the English- speaking community about inequality of different tongues through rhetorical appeals such as pathos, ethos, and logos. Amy Tan in her essay “Mother Tongue” claims that foreigners and immigrants who can’t speak proper English are treated differently.

In more modern times the interaction of English speakers with other languages, through first colonialism, and later the emergence of English as a global language has enriched the vocabulary (‘pyjama’) and led to the evolution of different versions of English around the world, for example the hybrid ‘Singlish’ that has emerged in Singapore.

The person’s identity reflects his culture and from where he belongs. People who migrate from their homeland to a foreign country struggled between native and foreign language. One has to become multilingual due to the demand of society to be able to communicate. In James Baldwin, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” And Amy Tan’s, “Mother Tongue” both authors experience struggle of language role and being bilingual in order to adjust in different societies. Leaving native language and being bilingual affects one’s public identity, personal life and inequality.

Who am I? What is it that defines that personality? Anzaldua argues in her essay that the language is what defines one’s identity. Language is indeed an important component of culture, and culture is known to be a crucial definer of identity. People use language to connect to their identities and communicating their realities and values to themselves and to the world around them… In other words, language is important because people use it to express their thoughts and beliefs. “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances” (Baldwin 109). Consequently, language does not necessarily define identity as much as identity defines language. People decide on

Critically acclaimed author, Amy Tan, in her essay “Mother Tongue”, considers cultural standards and preconceived notions propagated by society in the terms of language. Tan explores the perceptions behind those who speak in ‘broken English’ and the validity of all forms of self-expression by revisiting past experiences in her own life with her mother. She adopts a sincere and emotional tone in order to expose audiences to the discrimination many immigrants face in society on a continual basis. Ultimately, through the use of devices such as definition, comparison and contrast, and her masterful command of language; Tan expresses her central claim that all of her ‘englishes’ are deserving of recognition and respect.

Before the group discussion, I believed that the statement “And I use them all—all the Englishes I grew up with” (Tan, 1), was significant because it shows the reader how important the dialect of Amy Tan’s mother is to her. Additionally, this statement brings to light her diverse background in a variety of English dialects; making her opinion seem more valid. It also shows the reader how the dialects we listen to everyday change the way we think and speak in the future. This belief is proven by Tan when she says, “But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a role in shaping the language of the child (P4). On top of that, my personal experiences prove Tan’s point; in

According to Mark Williams, The debate over English-only policies are divisive in our society, “The instrumental consequences of state and local ‘official English’ legislation are virtually nil, and in the absence of a genuine threat to the status of English, the formal subordination of other languages is mainly divisive.”

``After the Norman Conquest, the British Isles were, with the exception of the Norman kingdom in Sicily, the most significantly multilingual and multicultural territory in western Europe`` (Crane 1999:35). Explain the background to this situation, and relate the changing uses of the different languages to the social and historical context.

As the majority of people have different definitions of the word multiculturalism as well as different views on the cultural and political impacts, I will put forward the different views throughout the chosen texts. As stated in the text ‘The successes and failures of multiculturalism’, the author defines the idea of multiculturalism as “the essence of multiculturalism is the idea that, if one makes immigrants feel welcome by allowing them to retain their culture and by seeking to address discrimination against them.” (Manning, A. 2011, page 1) This text argues that the apprehension about multiculturalism is interconnected to the conviction that in the United Kingdom, not all the minority groups that are living here consider themselves to be British, due to their ethnicity. In the table showing the Percentages Reporting a British National Identity by Ethnicity, on the second page of the ‘The successes and failures of multiculturalism’ text written by Alan Manning in 2011, it is shown that each different ethnic minority group have certain percentage of their population living in the United Kingdom that consider themselves to be British nationals, whether they were born in the United Kingdom, or abroad. Though the percentages diverge between each minority group, there are still a large number of people that consider themselves as British Nationals (Manning,

Over the past decades, a variety of approaches have been proposed to explain the phenomenon of language acquisition. These models were influenced by variety of disciplines and research directions, such as cognitive psychology, linguistics, etc.; therefore, the models relate to linguistic development in various ways. One of the most striking differences between the approaches is the perception of the place of heredity and environment in the process of acquiring language, but as we shall see each approach gives them a different weight and importance. In this paper we describe three approaches to acquire first and second language: Behaviorism, Innatism and Social-interactionist. During the work we will try to understand the characteristics of each approach; how they differ from each other; advantages and disadvantages; and what aspects from each theory that we should combine in our class.