Gloria Anzaldua's How To Tame A Wild Tongue

Analysis of Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”

“Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all other language I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself” (Anzaldua 502).
Above is a passage from an academic essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” written by Gloria Anzaldua, a female Mexican-American writer. In the essay, she spent huge amount of paragraphs describing the many kinds of languages she speaks with her “home tongue”. Her most native language, Chicano Spanish, is a regional dialect that is cut off from the Spanish speakers, and is considered to be improper and shameful to speak. Such persecution of a language causes extremely negative effects to its speakers. Anzaldua claims that language is a huge part of a person’s identity which influences the person’s self-recognition significantly, and the oppressing of minority languages causes its native speakers to have low self-esteem and

struggle to be accepted by the society as well as accepting themselves.
The passage which is introduced at the beginning is very important to Anzaldua’s central argument, because in the passage, she directly states that language is identity, and uses her own perspective and feelings to express how much language means to her pride and dignity, as well as her status in the society. Anzaldua is using herself to speak for the thousands of people who are struggling with the persecution of their own languages.
First of all Anzaldua claims that language is so important that it is a person’s identity. In the first sentence of the passage, the word “twin”(502) basically means identical, saying that a person’s language is the same as his/her identity. Anzaldua uses “twin skin”(502) to physicalize her language. By comparing language to skin, she is making the point that linguistic identity is a part of a person that is as important as skin, which represents race. It is something that would be diminished against, and it affects a person’s self-recognition significantly.
In addition, Anzaldua address that one’s pride and dignity is closely related to how one’s language is being treated.

In the second sentence, she expresses her own perspective that she can feel the dignity of herself, only when she can feel proud of her language. But she is afraid to speak her language, because it is not considered legitimate by the society. Speaking her language will cause people to judge diminish her. If you are ashamed to speak in your own language, how can you take pride in yourself? In order to be accepted by the society, she has to give up her language. Yet, how can she do that? As stated earlier, language is the identity of a person. It is an inseparable part of the human being, like a wild tongue. To give up that tongue, you have to cut it out. If you don’t, you will be a heathen, who is not accepted by the society, the other people, or even

yourself.
This is the struggle she suffers from, as does millions of other people whose language is not legitimate to be accepted by the society. In the third sentence, Anzaldua states that when a language is illegitimate, the speakers of it are also considered illegitimate. Even the speakers themselves would think so. Those people struggle to find their position in the society, carrying the signs labeling their illegitimacy: Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages that are being oppressed. They can’t show the signs, because it would bring them trouble. They can’t rip them off, because it would break themselves. So they hide the signs. In the meanwhile, how much they hope they can carry the signs without hiding them. How much they hope to be considered legitimate, to be part of the society justly instead of being diminished.
The chosen quote addresses Anzaldua’s main claim of language being a person’s identity, and using her own perspective to express the how much one’s language can mean and affect them. Anzaldua is speaking for the minority groups whose languages are being persecuted by the society. She is calling people to understand how important those languages are to them, to respect and embrace all the different cultures to be parts of justful society.