A Rhetorical Analysis Of Mother Tongue By Amy Tan
The piece of writing I am using for my rhetorical analysis is Mother Tongue by the famous author Amy Tan. Amy Tan is the author of such books as The Joy Luck Club. Mother Tongue was originally published in 1990 by the Sandra Dijsktra Literary Agency. Then was reprinted in Everything is an Argument with readings, by Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters. The text book was published by Bedford/ St. Martin’s in 2013. Mother Tongue was originally part of a speech that Amy Tan had given while she participated in a panel entitled,”Englishes: Whose English is it anyway?” in 1989. The author describes in detail how she finds herself using various forms of English, depending on who she is around. She also makes the point on how hard life can be for someone who doesn’t speak good English. She goes into her own historical and cultural background to detail how this came about. Including her stories about impersonating her mother for her mother. I believe the …show more content…
The first claim showed the variations of the English language and the difficulties one could incur if one did not speak it well.” I was walking down the street and became conscious I was using the English I do with my mother.”(Tan 622) The second claim also backed up the first claim by showing how hard it is to grow up as the child of an immigrant, whose first language was not English. The purpose of her claims was to educate and inform people on her observations and experiences. The author uses a lot of emotional yet comical appeals. Take for example the story where Amy’s mother had her on the phone with a stock broker, telling him off because she spoke better English then her mother (Tan 624). This story is comical
Rhetorical Analysis: The Privileges Of The Parents
1140 Words | 5 PagesRhetorical Analysis Draft Three “The Privileges of The Parents” is written by Margaret A. Miller, a Curry School of Education professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. This woman was a project director for the Pew-sponsored National Forum on college level learning from 2002-2004. This forum assessed the skills and knowledge of college educated students in five states by a way that allowed the test givers to make state-by-state comparisons. Miller believes that “[a] college education has benefits that ripple down through the generations” and this has enabled her to work and speak on topics such as: college level learning and how to evaluate it, change in higher education, the public responsibilities of higher education, campus
Rhetorical Analysis On Gloria Steinem
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Rhetorical Devices Used In Amy Tan's
102 Words | 1 PagesThe other rhetorical devices Tan used was narrative, illustration, casual analysis, and argumentation. Narrative was effective because she told her own story and used dialogue. Illustration was effective because she provided personal experience. Casual analysis was effective because she explained how some people don't understand or ignore what her mother says. Argumentation was effective for when Amy's mother
Broken Language In Mother Tongue By Amy Tan
1151 Words | 5 PagesTan herself states, “…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”. Even though her mother should be called smart or willful for attempting to learn a second language, she didn’t know it well enough to considered accomplished.
Amy Tan My Mother Tongue Analysis
778 Words | 4 PagesAlthough Arabic is considered the official language of the United Arab Emirates, English is the most commonly used because it is simply the one language that allows all expatriates to communicate. Dubai and the UAE in general, have a huge number of foreigners coming from all over the world for various reasons. Indians and Filipinos are some of the most familiar faces in the country, and they have brought with them the gift of language. As a cause of this, Tagalog, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and many more languages have flooded the region and created multiple mediums of communication, and the only language that binds them all together is English. Therefore, everyone begins to speak with one another in English, and slowly the mother language fades, or worse; it becomes broken.
Rhetorical Devices Used In How To Tame A Wild Tongue
469 Words | 2 PagesWhat makes a piece of writing effective? A piece of writing includes many things that make it effective, such as the style that appeals to the reader and rhetorical devices used in the writing that make it much more interesting. In this piece of writing titled “ How to tame a wild tongue “ includes many of these things. Even starting with the title it makes me curious as to what the piece will be about. There are two devices Anzaldua uses effectively in her essay which are anecdotes and parallel structure.
How To Tame A Wild Tongue Rhetorical Analysis
1356 Words | 6 PagesMy Rhetorical Analysis Language is a part one’s identity and culture, which allows one to communicate with those of the same group, although when spoken to someone of another group, it can cause a language barrier or miscommunication in many different ways. In Gloria Anzaldua’s article, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, which was taken from her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she is trying to inform her readers that her language is what defines her. She began to mention how she was being criticized by both English and Spanish Speakers, although they both make up who she is as a person. Then, she gave convincing personal experiences about how it was to be a Chicana and their different types of languages. Moreover, despite the fact that her language was considered illegitimate, Anzaldua made it clear that she cannot get rid of it until the day she dies, or as she states (on page 26) “Wild tongues can’t be, they can only be cut out.”
Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Jamila Lyiscott
553 Words | 3 PagesThe United States is made up of some of the most diverse and interesting cultures in the world. Jamila Lyiscott proves this by showing her different dialects and how they are all equally important. Lyiscott believes that the way she speaks towards her parents, towards her friends, and towards her colleagues are all one in the same. Throughout the entirety of her speech, Lyiscott changes up her vocal patterns and dialects so that the audience can understand first hand what each of these dialects are. When she talks about her father, Lyiscott uses her native tongue, when she talks to her fellow neighbors and close friends she switches it up to a more urbanized dialect, and when she is in school she masks the other two dialects with a professional sounding language.
Amy Tan Mother Tongue Essay
515 Words | 3 PagesHuman beings are similar to animals in their need to survive. Most would say we humans are superior because we can strategize and think past our instincts. I would like to argue that we have just learned to adapt at a faster pace because of the technologies we have created and have access to. As we grow, we learn there are different ways of expressing our opinions depending on whether we are at home, school, work, or even when we are with friends. When we were younger, we were taught what is acceptable and not acceptable in different situations.
Letter To Father And Mother Rhetorical Analysis
987 Words | 4 PagesA twelve year old boy a world away from his parents once wrote in a letter to his parents: “And I have nothing to comfort me, nor is there nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death.” This child was Richard Frethorne, and in “Letter to Father and Mother,” he communicates his desperation caused by the new world’s merciless environment to his parents to persuade them to send food and pay off his accumulated debts from the journey. He accomplishes this with deliberate word choice and allusions to the bible to appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos. Frethorne uses diction, imagery, and facts to create a letter to his parents which aims to garner sympathy for his state of life and to persuade them to send food and pay off his debts.
Rhetorical Analysis Of Mother Tongue
458 Words | 2 PagesRhetorical Precis #4: “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan Amy Tan’s purpose in her article “Mother Tongue” is to show the influence of her mother’s style of english. She also relates this to a more broad topic of the idea that there are many different types of english that people speak that are tailored to whoever they are speaking to. She begins this piece by stating plainly that she is not an english scholar. Instead of decreasing her credibility it actually increases it and paints this piece as a more personal set of observations rather than a bland overview of the entire language.
Similarities Between Amy Tan And Me And Mother Tongue
651 Words | 3 PagesIn “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and “superman and me” by Sherman Alexie, both authors focus on the importance of teaching oneself. While Amy Tan conveys this subject using personal experience, Sherman Alexie expresses it by using imagery. Ultimately, both authors portray the theme as having a passion to learn and being educated can benefit a person in life. Amy Tan's essay is a personal story that tells the reader about how her mother's english was perceived as “broken” or “fractured” by everyone.
Mother Tongue Summary
714 Words | 3 PagesAfter reading Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, my perspective changed about the struggles for people who are not as good at English. All throughout this article Tan uses personal experience from her mom to show the readers the struggle while also using primary sources to back up her claim. All the evidence backs up her initial claim and as the reader your perspective changes after reading about how she personally was effected. The author 's main claim of Mother Tongue is to persuade people so respect people who struggle with English because she has serval personal connections, she has fact based proof, and she is an experienced writer on this topic and in general. All throughout the reading she uses many personal stories and personal experiences on how difficult it was for her mother to go through her everyday life.
To Speak Is To Blunder Analysis
1635 Words | 7 PagesTo be orphaned from my native language felt, and still feels, like a crucial decision” (Lin 6). Yiyun Lin is caught between letting go her native language and wishes she can speak both because they both identify her. She struggles on choosing one of them and having one of them as a memory or a dream. This not only becomes a struggle for her, but an eye open decision on solving the problem of how she can combine a private language into a public language. “English is my private language.
Analysis Of Mother Tongue By Amy Tan
711 Words | 3 PagesSummary of "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan In "Mother Tongue, Amy Tan writes about how her mother 's broken English affects her life. She begins this narrative essay by talking about the day she became aware of the different forms of English that she was using at home and during formal events. Amy says, "The talk was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her" (Tan 1).
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