Language And Culture: A Look Into How To Tame A Wild Tongue

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

Anzaldua persuades her audience of Chicanos by her examples of her credibility. She is told many times that she needs to be able to speak Spanish without an accent. This affected her when she was younger a lot. She was not able to speak Spanish at school without her teacher telling her “If you want to be American, speak American! If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong.” She also had to fight with her mother about this because she wanted Anzaldua to not have the accent. She would tell her “I want you to speak English. Pa’ hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el ingles bien. Que vale toda tu educacion si todavia hablas ingles con un accent.” This translated to “To find good work you must know how to speak English well. That is worth all your education if you still speak English with an accent.” Anzaldua explains how she was mortified of this because she spoke English like a Mexican. She explains that she had to take two classes in order to get rid of her accents. She went on to become a teacher in 1971 and she was teaching High School English to Chicano

Throughout the writing, the author, Gloria Anzaldúa conveys multiple times how her relationship with her language and her history have impacted her. The author says on page 26, “Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language” (Anzaldúa, pg. 26). Prior to writing this, the author was writing about how she and other Chicano/Chicana people were being unequally and unfairly treated, simply due to their culture and the language(s) they spoke. By saying this, the author shows that even if the people were only scrutinizing her and her people for their language, it is just as bad as being blatantly discriminatory toward their race, ethnicity, background, culture, and more, as she expresses that one’s language and “linguistic

Anzaldua immediately uses cause and effect in the second excerpt to show how Chicano Spanish

Anzaldua’s audience is everyone, ranging from immigrants to native United States citizens. In her text she uses examples that many people can relate to when English isn’t their first language or they have a unique difference from the majority. An example I chose to back up my claim is one from Anzaldua's past experiences, this takes place in her childhood dentist office where from the imagery she gives us shows she annoyed with some of the state the dentist is saying about her “strong [and] stubborn” (206) tongue. Even though the comments made by the dentist wasn’t directed towards her language and accent, the way she feels while he’s speaking to her show that she already has some insecurities with the way she speaks. She believes that her language is something that defines her, and if people have a problem with how she speaks they have made up negative assumptions about her.

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 her passage, Anzaldua claims that language is an identity. She stresses the importance of how people who speak Chicano Spanish are viewed as inferior due to it not being a real language. Anzaldua reveals that “repeated attacks on [their] native tongue diminish[es] [their] sense of self” (532). Being criticized by the language one speaks causes a low self-esteem and a misconstruction of identity. It can lead a person to stop or hide the usage of their language thus suppressing one’s self. She highlights the discrimination of Chicanos, so people are aware of it therefore encouraging tolerance and social justice. Anzaldua argues that “until [she is] free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having to always translate. . .[her] tongue will be illegitimate” (533). This shows how truly she

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.

“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

The essay, “How to tame a wild tongue” written by Gloria Anzaldua is a staggering piece on important social issues such as racism, cultural differences, individuation, and domination. Anzaldua believes that her language is yet the most central and important component for her ethnic identity as a person. If her language is threatened, then her individuality is threatened. She basically responds to the violence she experienced as her character was restricted in this dominating society that she was trying to adapt in. Anzaldua used quotes from various scholars who feel the same way about the society as she did about language, identity, racism, and cultural imperialism. Additionally, her writing was based on personal experience which enriches the essay with credibility since the reader is able to get the experience first handed by the victim of these crimes. Furthermore, as an immigrant myself, I was attracted to this essay because I could relate to many of the topics she covered. I also saw this as a way to compare my experience with hers’ so I could see how much this society has improved overall.

Anzaldua speaks on linguistic terrorism and describes that it happens when one tries to rid another of their roots. “All Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose to get rid of our

This article was written to sensitize people about how difficult it is to adapt to a country with different cultures and perceptions. It speaks of social indifferences, as well as, how important it is to have legal documentation in order to become someone in this country. In fact; it expresses how the Dream Act has given hope to those who had lost it, and explains the impotence felt by Hispanic parents for not speaking the English language fluently. Their studies showed, that language proficiency and discrimination are the main obstacles faced by immigrant students and parents in U.S. It highlighted; how social systems kept certain groups isolated and disenfranchised. Furthermore; it shows step by step, how, why, where and when the research

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.

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

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