Mother’s Tongue vs. Public Language Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan, both writers, talk about their experiences with non-American backgrounds living in America. In both of their essays "Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" by Rodriguez, and "Mother Tongue" by Tan, are very similar in that they both emphasize the importance of language and describes how it affected their lives. Both Rodriguez and Tan stress the importance of their family's language. Tan expresses two major issues; how language has impacted both her and her mother's lives and the different English's she uses towards her mother and others. Similarly, Rodriguez explains how language has affected him and his family's lives and the transition from Spanish to English.
Amy Tan Final Exam In “My Mother’s English” by writer Amy Tan, we learned that her perception on her mother’s English had evolved over-time. As a writer Amy Tan feels that language is her way or tool of getting a point across, she even uses “All the English she grew up with”, meaning the fractured English her mother taught her. Tan says, “It is the sort of English that is our language of Intimacy, the English that relates to family talk, and the English that I grew up with”. Tan’s main point is that even though her mother speaks what some would call broken English, to her it’s beautiful to other “English speakers” it is abnormal. I think that her mother has been labeled or stereotyped.
To make her point clear she uses a lot of pathos and a lot of examples from experiences with herself and her two daughters, Louisa and Sofia. At the beginning when she tells the stories about her daughters trying to fight back you think ’what a terrible mother’, but she uses this feeling to support the view the readers have on the Chinese mothers as being mean to their kids so that afterwards she can tell how it turned out good and therefor the way she raises her kids is the best. Amy Chua has a high ethos because she is a professor at Yale which is a very respected job, and as a parent it makes her more reliable because she tells the reader that her parents treated her the same way that she treats her daughters, and as we can see she has been very successful. Also she uses loghos: ”In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70 % of the Western mothers said either that ”stressing academic success is not good for children” or that ”parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun”. By contrast,
Language After reading several meaningful essays on the topic of language, including “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” by: James Baldwin, and its ramifications and the parts that contribute to one’s language or form of English, I have come to the realization that although culture, power, and identity impact a persons language, culture, power, and identity are impacted by the language you speak. Much of Amy Tan’s argument defending her mother’s language, which she describes, with lack of a better word, as “Broken” English, has to do with her culture. Tan is California born, from parents who are immigrants from china. She speaks of how she once tried to distance herself from her Chinese culture when she thought that it gave her a bad reputation. But while writing her first novel she realized that Her culture and her background made her the writer and gave her the language she speaks today.
In the essay, “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan emphasizes the idea that we all speak different languages unconsciously and also we are categorized by the way we speck. In the essay Tan observes experiences that made her realized the different types of “Englishes” she uses. The first time she became aware was when giving a talk about her book, “The Joy Club,” she saw her mother in the audience and she realized that she had been using academic language learned from books, a language she had never used with her mother. The second time she noticed one of her “Englishes” was when talking with her mother and husband, she said “not waste money that way” which for her is an intimate language used only by her family. Tan emphasizes that fact that her mother recognizes her opportunities and interaction in life are limited by her English.
These may provide insights and possible answers to identify conflicts between mothers and daughters as Hmong women integrate into American society. This study focuses on the disagreements between Hmong mothers and daughters regarding issues associated with schooling, extra-curricular activities, dating, and responsibilities in the home. The nature of these conflicts has a direct impact on both the mothers' and daughters' levels of education and sophistication as well as the familiarity with the "new culture," language, and
An In-Deep Understanding of “Mother Tongue” In the essay “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan accomplishes in three things simultaneously: she appeals the audiences emotionally by providing the pictures of the experiences between her mother and her; she shows the struggle of cultural racism that her mother and she go through without pointing out directly; and she puts some odd things into the essay and make it expressive. Amy Tan’s essay is very successful because she writes in her personal and “easy to read” style. Without the special English she uses in her writing, we may not easily understand and accept her ideas. Tan writes about that she has grown up with using different kinds of English: the English she learned in school and she uses in public, and the English she uses in speaking with her mother, which is described as the “broken” English. Moreover it comes to her sense that language is not only a communication tool but also an essential thing in enabling individuals to define their identities.
This is the list we first see in the article, it seems like very normal things in the Western world, the children are more independent and get to experience basic social things, which the Chinese children don’t, in China it is the parents who chooses which instruments they have to play. Chua uses provocation in the article to draw in the reader, like for example the title “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” this question the Western mothers parenting skills. She implies that
Summary of “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” was written by Professor Amy Chua who is a Chinese mother of two. This article was published January 8th, 2011 in the Wall Street Journal. This article is mainly intended for what Chua refers to as “Western parents.” Amy Chua’s opinion is that these “Western” mothers fail at having successful children unlike Chinese mothers such as herself. According to Chua, Chinese mothers believe that if their child fails it is directed towards their parenting and that they have failed as a parent. Chua listed all the things she doesn’t allow her children to do, and she believes that it is correlated to how successful her children will be.
Rodriguez emphasizes the need for a public language in order to function well and take in the “social and political advantages” (Rodriguez 440) of acquiring a “public language” (Rodriguez 435). Rodriguez’s experiences are mirrored in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” in which Tan details the experiences her mother faces because of her mother’s “broken” (Tan 442) English. Because of the nature of Rodriguez’s claims concerning the disadvantaged status of those who lack a public identity, we are able to apply his assertions to Tan’s essay to further critique and analyze the experiences that Tan’s mother went through. Rodriguez asserts “Only when I was able to think of myself as an American, no longer an alien in gringo society, could I seek the rights and opportunities necessary for public identity.” He further emphasizes that, “The social and political advantages I enjoy as a man result from the day that I came to believe that my name indeed is Rich-heard Road-ree-guess” (Rodriquez 440). Rodriguez claims that public language, which in this case happens to be English, provides the foundation for the rights and opportunities available for those who speak the “public language” (Rodriguez 435).