Amy Tan Mother Tongue Essay

720 Words2 Pages

Language and Identity of her Mother’s Tongue In Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue”, she uses anecdotes and selection of details to convey her empathy and respect towards her mother’s language and identity. As a Chinese immigrant, Amy Tan’s mother experiences language barriers in her everyday life. Overcoming these obstacles pose challenges for her, as well as Tan. By the use of anecdotes, Tan is able to illustrate to the reader ways in which her mother and she surmount the various barriers between “broken” english and societies. Tan comes to the realization that her use of rhetoric is way past her mother’s comprehension and decides to do something about it. In addition, Tan uses selection of detail to enhance the expression of her empathy and respect towards her mother. Tan realizes the everyday …show more content…

Tan eludes to the fact that her mother’s way of speaking is what she was brought up with and will always be a part of her. Tan writes, “That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world”. The idea of Tan being brought up with this language and has grown from it makes it a point of respect. The foundations her mother gave her to grow from are infinitely more valuable than the experiences she had while expanding on the language. Another detail Tan used is when she was speaking on how people classified her mother’s way of speaking as broken or fractured english. This began to alarm Tan because she felt as if it was to put her language to shame, “It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “broken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness.” (Tan). Tan’s sensitivity towards this shows empathy of her mother situation. Her mother language to her is full of character and life and she wants others to realize that as

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