...Mother Tongue By Amy Tan By Jian C. Chen...
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...Breaking the Language Barrier Dawn Schwaeber FYS-102-DL2A: First Year Seminar Adjunct Professor Camille A. Kramer March 23, 2014 Abstract “The Mother Tongue” which was written in 1990 is a touching story of acceptance and appreciation written by Amy Tan, who is most famous for her novel “The Joy Luck Club”. I read over the story several times, and in doing so I realized what language, and interpretation of that language really is. This inspiring writing piece shows that it’s not just a mere combination of words and grammatical phrases thrown together to form sentences and even paragraphs, it’s really about conveying a message with passion and emotion. A message that might inspire an idea, an image or a resolution to a problem. Tan’s essay shows me that the language a person learns at home is not necessarily the normal language of the society. Despite the limitations her Mother’s broken English placed on her as a child, Tan has become a successful writer. This to me, is truly incredible and breaks the language barrier. The Mother Tongue Amy Tan is someone who has always been fascinated by language. In the beginning of her narrative essay “The Mother Tongue, which was published in 1990 she states that “I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of time thinking about the power of language. – the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or the simple truth.” She goes on to describe the various forms...
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...Edgar Hernandez Professor Ali ENC 1102 March 20, 2014 Amy Tan's, “Mother Tongue” and Alice Walker's “Everyday Use” both share similar traits in their writings of these two short stories. “Mother Tongue” revolves around the experiences Tan and her mother had due to her mother's English speaking limitations, she also revolves her story around the relationship of a mother and daughter. Alice walker on the other hand writes a story narrated by “Mama” the mother of two daughters Maggie and Dee and explains the conflicting relationship she has with Dee, both writers similarly emphasize on the relationships these mother and daughter characters had and they unravel both short stories based on these relationships. Although both short stories share this one similar characteristic it is clear that both writers have opposite point of views of their described mother daughter relationships. To begin comparing, both Tan and Walker use the characters of mother and daughter to evoke the importance the relationship plays in the telling of the story. There are similarities that both these characters share. One of these similarities are shown through the use of words that describe a similar feeling of shame or embarrassment both Dee and Tan have towards there mothers at some point in the stories. In one part of the story Tan describes feeling “ashamed” of her mother's broken English (Tan 345). Walker also shows the character Dee having some sense of shame of her mother and sister Maggie by...
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...ability to succeed. In “Mother’s Tongue”, Amy Tan explores the idea of variable language in which she explains that even a language other than English can be a crucial contributing factor to youths. The story centers on discriminations done on Amy and her mother. Amy Tan is a daughter of an immigrant family. She is a fictional writer who grew up watching her parents, especially her mother struggle with the English language. When she was a child, she was embarrassed by her mother’s inability to express herself in a proper English. In the story, she observes experiences in which she grew up with different kinds of English. One of the examples in which she notices that she was using a different English was when the author and her husband took “Not waste money that way” (Tan 1) as grammatically acceptable. She sooner figured out the reason why her husband did not have negative remarks about her statement and it's for the reason that she, herself has been speaking in broken English just like her mother. Still, it should not serve as an excuse for other people to make her feel like she is less of a person. All her life her mother was looked down because of the fact that she could not speak proper English. Amy Tan has numerous interactions in which she has to play the part of her mother so she could help her deal with important people. When Amy was young she pretended to be her mother on the phone to get the people’s attention, like when she has to yell at her mother’s stockbroker for not...
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...my mother to learn English to solve her problem by herself in life. According to “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, Her parents are Chinese and speak “limited” English. When Amy Tan was fifteen, she used to feel pressure to be a translator to aid her mother on the phone. Her teacher and classmates think the Asian American student can’t be good at English, yet Amy Tan challenges against...
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...Language forms an integral part of the formation of identity and the gradual development of personal esteem. Despite the ubiquitous nature of lingua franca such as the English language, people who are conscious of their indigenous identity are keen to incorporate aspects of their mother tongue in common languages. However, not all individuals feel proud of expressing their forms of synthesized language. The relationship between cultural identity and language is mutual. Language plays a vital role in placing an individual in an appropriate societal position (Val and Vinogradova 2). Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue and Anzaldua Gloria’s, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” are exquisite examples of the formation of language and cultural identities due to interactions with American culture. A comparative analysis of both texts can reveal that each author...
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...Galley 1 Kristen Galley Professor Lee Harrison ENGL 1301, Tuesday 2:30p.m (Class Red) 30, September 2013 Language and its Meaning Language defines someone’s culture or character as a person, it is a means of history and ancestry. Without language it would be hard for people to communicate on a level to which they actually understand one another. In Amy Tan’s and James Baldwin’s essay’s they both go into detail about their aspects of what language is meant to them, and discusses it in detail throughout their stories. James Baldwin in his essay discusses a main and questionable factor of a type of English called “Black English” and it actually being a language. While, Amy Tans story is mainly about different types of English languages that she had to pursue her entire life whether it be broken, simple, or watered down English. Each author speaks of different perceptions on English, which should not be judged or ridiculed in any way. James Baldwin in his essay, “If Black English isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?," he starts off by stating that Language isn't the main issue in his essay, it is just apart from what has truly evolved in international societies. He refers to the Americans as not recognizing that Black English is a Language, because it is a different kind of language and isn't necessarily acceptable to them. According to Baldwin Black...
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...Amy Tan, author of “Mother Tongue”, and Richard Rodriguez, author of “Public and Private Language”, both grew up in a home where English was a second language. Both authors write about their experiences growing up and learning English language. Each of them had a language that was spoken only within their home and one that was spoken outside of it, in public. They talk about their parents and the impact their ability to speak the language had on their lives. Even though Tan and Rodriguez shared a similar background their experiences were very different. In “Mother Tongue”, Tan recalled a time when she was giving a talk on one of her works; a talk that she had given before without a problem. Tan wrote, ”I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room.” In that instance Tan became aware of the different “Englishes” she spoke. The English she was using was one that was taught to her. The one she called “Standard” English. She stated it was “all the forms of a Standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother” (Tan, 2011). Rodriguez, on the other hand, referred to English as a public language. In “Public and Private Language” he writes, “What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right – and the obligation – to speak the public language of los gringos” (Rodriguez, 2011). Coming from a Spanish-speaking home, Rodriguez faced the challenge of learning...
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...Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan Comprehension 1. What Tan is classifying in this essay is the different kinds of English she uses. 2. Tan identify the different categories she discusses in “Mother Tongue” almost in the last paragraph, where she named all the kind of English she uses. 3. Tan does illustrate each category she identifies 4. Some specific situations where Tan says her mother’s “limited English” was a handicap is when her mother could not be able to talk directly with people, or would not be taken serious by the people she talked to. 5. One of the effects that her mother’s limited English has had on Tan’s life is the fact that, that was the language that helped shape the way she saw things, expressed things, and made sense of the world. 6. Tan account for the difficulty she had in answering questions on achievement tests, particularly word analogies: she could not be focused on the answers, she would read the example, and then those words would be stock in her mind keeping off the rest of the options. I do think her problem in this area has something to do with the level of her family’s language skills, because she grew up with that level of language as well, that is the way that she learned. 7. In paragraph 18, Tan considers the possible reasons for the relatively few Asian Americans in the fields on language and literature. Some explanations she offers are that Asian students do better on math achievement tests than in English and that there...
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...American children are taught throughout their school years that the United States is a melting pot. The United States has residents from every country in the world. People are classified as Black, White, Asian, Hispanic and many other things whether it is politically correct or not. The many intersectionality’s or “hats” that people could have acquired through their lifetime are shown through Jeannine Capó Crucet’s essay “Taking My Parents to College”, Amy Tans “Mother Tongue”, and Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me.” Jeannine Capó Crucet is a first generation college student who was born in the US, to her Cuban born parents. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida in a low income family. (Crucet 1) These are all intersectionality’s that she sheds light on her essay “Taking My Parents to College”. Crucet has quite a few culture shocks when she starts her freshman year of college at Cornell University. She finds that she was raised differently than the other students. Other students were eager to say goodbye to their parents during the first week while she was hesitant to let them go. (Crucet 1) Jeannine finds herself without the...
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...Imagine having to always speak for your mother because her English broken or being so poor that you have to dig in the garbage for a meal. In The Glass Castle by author Jeannette Walls, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, “Going Gangsta Choosin Cholita” by Neil Bernstein, and “Vanity Fair” by Nancy Jo Sales all show how childhood experiences can shape an individual into someone who they would be for the rest of their lives. Jeannette Walls and Amy Tan overcome the negative things that happened in their lives, while the kids in “Choosin Cholita” and “Vanity Fair” seem to be more focused on all of the wrong things. Jeannette Walls and Amy Tan show how negative childhood experiences shaped them into a better individual, but we see through April Miller and Alexis Neirs how negative childhood experiences can shape a person for the worst we see this through their personalities and career paths. Jeanette Walls the author of The Glass Castle overcame the negative childhood experiences such the poverty and being around an alcoholic father. In The Glass Castle Jeanette Walls and her three siblings Lori, Maureen, and Brian had a tough upbringing. They never let it get the best of them even when times became real tough. Those tough situations they had growing up made all of them stronger indidvials. “When mom got the extra big royalty check came in, Mom brought canned ham. We ate off of it for days cutting thick pieces of to make sandwiches with. Since we had no refrigetor we left the ham sitting...
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...Engl_114_686 January 31, 2014 Home Language In the lecture of Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue” is described as the way in which language develops from location in which we are raised, and unconsciously we adapt our language with each group we socialize with in our lives. Tan describes herself as someone who is “fascinated by language in daily life. There was a specific moment in the text that Tan realizes that she is using different “Englishes” in different social contexts. Tan was giving a speech about her life, writing, and her book "The Joy Luck Club," to a group of scholarly people, but her mother was also present. It was at this time that she realized that her expressions were more academic, using more formal English, a language she had never used with her mother. Along with the lecture, she relates several examples of how her mother’s “Englishes” influenced her throughout her life, and how sometimes it was a barrier to communication. It was for this reason that Amy Tan decided to write a book where the reading level is easy and understandable--for those who like her mother had difficulty with complex English grammar. In many ways, Tan’s mother’s immigration experience was molded by her grasp of the English language. At times, new immigrants are pre-judged due to their language abilities, which can make life even more difficult. As a new immigrant to the US I can relate to many of Tan’s mother’s experiences. Amy Tan gives as an example when she was talking to her mother about furniture...
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...in which we communicate our ideas so that we can appeal to the views of the majority. Two authors explore how their attempt to compromise almost caused them to become detached from their roots. In "Mother Tongue," by Amy Tan, Tan talks about growing up as a young child in America and learning the English language. She speaks about growing up as a writer and her mother's imperfect diction which had a major influence on her. On the other hand, In her essay, "Censoring Myself," Betty Shamieh talks about being an American playwright and having to censor herself because of how her work was viewed. Both authors explore the influence that their background had on their ability to express themselves. As individuals we should not be afraid to express ourselves because of our differences, rather we should use our differences and show how our distinctions make us very unique. Firstly, In ""Mother Tongue," Tan talks about how her mother's limited English diction skewered her perception of her mother. Tan mentions how, "Like others, I have described it to people as "broken" or "fractured" English" (Tan 273). This shows how Tan viewed her mother's English speaking abilities. She describes it as if her mother spoke damaged English, which needed to be mended or repaired. For Tan it was imperative...
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...English 150 18 December 2014 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 do immigrants conform to new surroundings. In “Drown,” the title story of his narrative collection, Junot Diaz enumerates the story of a Hispanic youth growing up in New Jersey. Though Diaz explores issues of queerness, shamelessness, and familial relations within this selection, it is his use of language that proves most intriguing. Rather than simply describing the struggles of adapting to a new language or customs, Diaz portrays how, at an early age, he manipulated language as a tool to makes sense of his new hybrid identity. The use of language in Junot Diaz’s Drown is spare and unadorned, often rendered in "Spanglish," an unpredictable mixture of both English and Spanish. Diaz uses Spanish words in the midst of standard English sentences...
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...After reading Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue”, I have come to several conclusions. Right away, I identified her audience as the general public, specifically those reading The Threepenny Reviews since this is where her paper was published. However, after further analysis, I see she could have been targeting specific groups. I also think that Tan could be explaining her story to people who read her works, since so much of her literature seems to be influenced by how she views language. Also, there are parts throughout the essay that give tidbits on how she overcame what was expected of her, since she did not do as well with English-related schooling as she did with the Sciences, for example. This leads me to believe that Tan is explaining how she came to be to fellow colleagues who are interested in her story, perhaps. When reflecting on her piece, I find that Tan has a few purposes. I believe that one purpose is to show the influence of language on life experience. For example, when Tan made phone calls for her mother or communicated for her in any way, this showed that the mother’s life experiences were limited due to the language barrier. The converse of this statement can also be argued, because experience also has an influence on language. In saying this, I mean that what you go through in this life influences your interpretation of how you see language. Before reading this essay, I rarely thought about my language, but now I realize more about how I speak. Since...
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