Brian Perguachi

Composition

Oct 26 2021

Mother’s Tongue Rhetorical analysis

Amy Tan,  the author of “mother tongue” is a Chinese American writer as well as a novelist that explores many things. In many of her pieces she writes about how language, accent or nationality can really affect a person in society. She emphasizes this topic in her piece “mother tongue” This text was a personal essay written by Amy Tan. She wrote this to show how difficult it can be growing up with a mother that speaks in a “broken English” instead of the “standard English” , and by making it personal a reader can really feel connected with the author, many of us have being or  have someone u love be discriminated just because of their language barrier. Amy’s mother is a chinese immigrant, moving to the US, a country that speaks mostly english, affected her mom a lot. Her mother’s first language was mandarin, and learning a new one was challenging due to the difference between both languages. This created an accent in Amy’s mother’s voice. Amy didn’t like this at all, she being a child born in America she learned english quickly. 

In “mother Tongue” Amy tan also explains that by the fact that her mothers english was not perfect and she was the one who take care of her, this affected her in a negative way academically. Amy explains that because of the broken English, her English skills were bad, making her better at math instead of language. This is one of the reasons many Chinese students decide to do engineering. Her mother on the other side struggled, and many people took advantage of this. She was being discriminated against as well as mistreated just because she had an accent when talking. Amy’s Mother’s “limited” and “broken” English was something that society doesn’t want to accept. Amy Tan said this about her mother “That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me:the fact that people in department stores, at banks, andin restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not heard her.” According to this quote, a Chinese mother with imperfect English is not being accepted by people. Instead of this, people make fun of her, or they just don’t respect her because she doesn’t have “perfect” english. Your society sees unperfect English as a form to measure intelligence. If a person has an accent, or can’t read well or even understand something, they think that the level of intelligence of that person is lower than someone who can speak this thing called “perfect english”. I mean knowing how to speak a language correctly is really impressive, but this has nothing to do with how smart and intellectual you are. This quote really shows how bad it can be to not be able to speak the same way as the people around you talk. This is really important because the fact that Amy decided to talk about this helps her show emotion in her piece, also this affects many of us readers, especially if you are someone who came from a foreign country like myself In this reading Amy Tan also explains that many of Her friends said they didn’t understand Amy’s mother, some of them said they could only understand fifty percent, others twenty five percent and others zero. Even Amy Tan criticized her mother’s limited English and the language barrier that was stopping her from getting better opportunities in life. By writing this Amy tried to show the readers that language is something essential when it comes to succeeding in society or in life in general. All of this made Amy Tan decide to get into writing about these issues, and even though she had many challenges growing up like this, she became a very important writer that influenced many asians americans to fight back.  “Mother Tongue” responds to the fact that the value, ideas and intelligence of a person are not affected by the way they speak, even if they speak in a “broken” way. This doesn’t change the fact that someone with ‘broken’ English can think the same way as a person with a “perfect” English can. In “mother Tongue” Amy tan also explains that by the fact that her mothers english was not perfect and she was the one who take care of her, this affected her in a negative way academically. Amy explains that because of the broken english of her mother, her english skills were slowed down, this making her being better at math instead of language. 

Language barrier can be really harmful, it can have many negatives effects on people without perfect English. Amy Tan really showed this by writing about her own mother and how the challenges she faced made her stronger. Writing this piece reminded me of myself because when I came from my foreign country I didn’t understand anything and it was something hard, but writing this made me realize that your language is your identity, is who you are. Even if you’re judged, you shouldn’t feel ashamed. Your language makes you unique. Amy Tan really made a strong point that created many people like myself to not be ashamed anymore. Someone else is not smarter than you just because you can’t pronounce a word right or just couldn’t understand.