Society discriminates those who are deemed “different”, thus, society discriminates immigrants. In her essay “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan shares her and her mother’s personal experiences with discrimination after moving to the United States from China. She believes that immigrants who cannot speak perfect English are unfairly judged. Non-immigrants need to understand the hardships that are faced by people who move to different countries. Speaking about discrimination, Tan utilizes parallelism, simplistic diction, and cumulative sentences to create a broad, universal appeal. To begin, Tan explains her background and the maltreatment of immigrants through parallelism. She introduces herself saying, “I am not a scholar of English or literature…
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Starting the essay quoting her own simple language, Tan states, “We were talking about the price of new and used furniture and I heard myself saying this: ‘Not waste money that way’” (700). Tan describes her mother’s English as ‘simple’ and ‘broken’ throughout her essay. When she quotes herself using this same common vernacular, however, she connects to multitudes of people by displaying that she can relate to them because she went through the same situation. Analyzing her family’s language, she says “It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the English I grew up with” (701). Her straightforward wording, such as her phrase “family talk”, qualifies the different type of English she uses. By doing this, she appeals to all people who struggle with perfect English because they are able to easily understand what she’s saying. After quoting a story about a particular instance of her mother’s language, Tan describes her thought process about her mother’s speech: “Lately, I’ve been giving more thought the the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English” (701). By describing her mother’s speech as “‘broken’ or ‘fractured’ English”, Tan simplifies the explanation of her mother’s English. She avoids an evasive description which appeals to many readers because they can apprehend her
Starting the essay quoting her own simple language, Tan states, “We were talking about the price of new and used furniture and I heard myself saying this: ‘Not waste money that way’” (700). Tan describes her mother’s English as ‘simple’ and ‘broken’ throughout her essay. When she quotes herself using this same common vernacular, however, she connects to multitudes of people by displaying that she can relate to them because she went through the same situation. Analyzing her family’s language, she says “It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the English I grew up with” (701). Her straightforward wording, such as her phrase “family talk”, qualifies the different type of English she uses. By doing this, she appeals to all people who struggle with perfect English because they are able to easily understand what she’s saying. After quoting a story about a particular instance of her mother’s language, Tan describes her thought process about her mother’s speech: “Lately, I’ve been giving more thought the the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English” (701). By describing her mother’s speech as “‘broken’ or ‘fractured’ English”, Tan simplifies the explanation of her mother’s English. She avoids an evasive description which appeals to many readers because they can apprehend her