Mother Tongue By Gordon Allport

In the essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldua uses her voice to speak about social and cultural difficulties Chicanos face. Her voice comes from many years of struggling to identify herself within society. She brings to light many issues, including sexism and racism. I think she is writing to give others a voice, who face similar challenges. Anzaldua writes about her experiences through many different voices including Spanish, White, Indian, woman, and feminist.

Prejudice is explained and illustrated with examples deriving from culture and treatment of African Americans and how society perceives them to be. The definition of Prejudice is, “An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason”(Dictionary.com) The majority of humans tend to judge individuals by appearance rather than personality. Prejudice and appearance are prevalent in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein as well as today’s culture which has consequences regarding race, age, religion, etc.

Activist, Gloria Anzaldua’s narrative excerpt “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” She goes into the 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 they witness the efforts she went through if not observe then actually experienced. Anzaldua's thesis is that language is a part of one’s identity. People shouldn't let others try to tame their tongue or cut off their native language because once they do, they can disconnect a person from their culture and roots

Nowadays, everything has been developed by scientists, technologists, and developers, which makes almost everything seem not only convenient, but also people are lazy. Changing technologies, both in communication and transportation have connected every person around the world. People can see many things different from themselves such as cultures, civilization, social life, and human activities. Ordinary humans have to sort things, including people when seeing many various things for remembering. Moreover, in the articles, “See Baby Discriminate” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “Don’t Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgments” by Robert L. Heilbroner, “To Any Would Be Terrorists” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and “Not a Genuine Black Man” by Brian Copeland, the writers discuss about stereotype through their experiences, research, and experiments. The authors show judgments are the main part of the stereotype, which let us racially profile others with discrimination. The brain’s systems work automatically and naturally in order to think from sensory perception. Thus, the way of thought is to classify people and others by using history, appearance, and race because people don’t want to observe the others all the time, to prejudice in some groups, and to divide themselves racially.

Indian Voices is a compelling story that spans different Native America cultures across the United States. Within the words of this book Alison Owings writes such an amazing storying about how she evolved in her ignorance of Native American culture to meeting, observing, listening, and, at times, participating in daily lives of American Indians. She began her book talking about her ignorance of Native American life and how the stereotypical teaching in schools of Native Americans is corrupt and represents American Indian lives in the wrong way. Over her eight-year journey, traveling east to west and north to south, documenting over 16 tribal nations, while writing Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans, Owings learned about

First off, Tan explains how her mother spoke “broken” English, but Tan thought her English was perfect the way it was. Tan states, “But to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, and perfectly natural”(419). Here, Tan explains that even though most of Tan’s friends say they don’t understand anything her mother says, Tan explains that she believes her mother’s English is just regular English. Tan also states, “Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery”(419). With this, Tan goes into detail on how she thinks her mother’s language sounds perfect. Tan expresses that her mother’s language isn’t bad, but very clear and descriptive.

In Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue” (1990), she asserts to her audience that people shouldn’t be judged for how they speak, that all english is correct, and that there is no “wrong way” to speak english. Tan supports her belief using her experience with her mother’s English and the English she grew up with to tell how growing up she would be embarrassed whenever her mother talked and how people wouldn’t take her seriously or people wouldn’t be able to understand her. By using a personal example, she makes her audience feel sympathy in order to make them think and maybe change the way they look at people with a disability or people who just can’t speak right. Tan is trying to get her audience to listen to her and hope that they’ll do something

Title Three essays depict three different attributes; personal opinion, perception, and attitude, although they are based on variation and in state of mind. Amy Tan in “Mother Tongue” talks about the forms of the English language. She says, variation in languages creates many obstacles in ordered to be socialized and cared among people. Joan Didion in “On Morality” explores her perception that we don’t have no way of knowing- what is “right” and what is “wrong”, what is “good” and what is “evil”. And George Orwell in “Shooting an Elephant” talks about his internal war between his mind and feelings.

Throughout The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson construes the origins and the history of English and the language's countless quirks.

In order to truly understand the culture and various lifestyles that envelop American society today, one must learn to appreciate and understand their own cultural heritage. Lev Vygotsky, a psychologist in the early 1900’s, simply put it, “Language and culture are the frameworks through which humans experience, communicate, and understand reality.” Therefore, culture determines more than merely our origin or family; culture shapes the structure of our lives, and greatly impacts our future perspective of the world. As I began to explore my family’s history and lineage, I developed a sense of pride as I was exposed to the endeavors my great-grandparent’s underwent. Whether it was struggling to enter a completely different culture,

In the ‘Mother Tongue’, Amy Tan explains how she dwells among two worlds regarding language. With her family, especially her own mother, Amy’s speech is simple english. While in the outside world Amy uses traditional textbook english. As she grew up, Amy conveyed that she felt ashamed of her mother’s limited english. For example, Amy recounts an instance when she imitated her mother on the phone, because her mother’s stock broker lost a check. During her conversation with the New York City stock broker, Amy desperately tried to sound like an adult. All the while her mother noisily conveyed responses in the background. Also Amy conveys that she is disappointed in society, specifically pertaining to the treatment of individuals with broken english.

After reading the novel, Native Son, I realized that the author , Richard Wright, was trying to aggrandize a lesson in the story of the blindness caused by racism and stereotypes on both oppressed and the oppressor. In the beginning of the story, he put Bigger in a position like an animal trapped in a cage; with no hope or freedom as pop culture and even his mother dehumanize him as nothing but sullen. Such negative actions to Bigger, the main character, made me side for him even though I knew his fate was already grim and already predicted. Almost like the play," Romeo and Juliet", Wright made clear of tragedy, but like Shakespeare, he showed the reader the actions and even thinking that leads to the main action of the story. At

Stereotypes have existed since humans first began to roam the planet. Early Australopithecus, the first humans, most likely used stereotypes when deciding their daily task. Stereotypes such as everything are dangerous and want to kill them. Later as Homo sapiens created cities and civilianization’s stereotypes helped evaluate an incoming threat so they could close the city and gather a defense to save not only themselves but everything they worked hard to create from those who would kill them and take the city from them. But modern human’s ability to perceive threats have been clouded by stereotypes base on skin color; to a point where anyone who is different is a threat who needs to be eliminated. A proactive human whose flight or fight response is to fight will sometimes attack this perceived threat without any other information aside from the stereotype. These attacks can sometimes lead to the arrest or death of the “threat” who, in most cases, was an innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time. So while stereotypes where essential to survival in early cultures, modern use of stereotypes have turned to the extremes clouded by hatred of those who are different.

For My People is the title poem in a volume consisting of twenty-six poems written by Margaret Walker in 1942. Over the course of fifty years, Walker published eleven books and is known to have written an untold number of poems, short stories, reviews, letters, and speeches that remain to be collected. Walker wrote from a place inside of her that was tempered by her own cultural and social background, one that was rooted in a strong religious faith and belief in the ultimate goodness of humankind. The purpose of this brief paper is to show how Margaret Walker’s poem For My People illuminates the mimetic, didactic and expressive theories.

Amy Tan’s mother is treated differently than her daughter for her less developed English language skills. Amy mother English skills can be described as limited. Amy herself admits to having looked down upon her own mother for these less developed skills when she was younger. She incorrectly believed that her mother’s thoughts and opinions were less important because of this. “I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect” (Tan 364). She goes on to give examples of why she thought this way, how her mother was taken less seriously, and treated poorly due to