Communication Patterns In Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

Language has no standard. This lack of standard means language cannot recount information the same way with every person. People have different communication styles based on where they live and grew up. Certain regions speak differently than other regions based on geographical differences. Amy Tan, in “Mother Tongue,” highlights these different communication patterns when she addresses stories about her mother (Mrs. Tan) and the way the made-up standards affects her interaction with other people. Mrs. Tan’s style of speech causes different types of people to discriminate against her because her speech lacks fluidity of sentence structure and transitions, and her standard of English differs from the people she speaks to. Her speech contains …show more content…
These standards measure a person based on his way of communication. Communicating according to the standard makes a person seem educated, but communicating below the standard means he will face judgment for not having suitable speaking abilities. He will also endure people looking at him and communicating with him in a condescending tone. This condescending tone means people speak to him as if he speaks as a child and incapable of comprehending abstract ideas. Amy Tan confirms her mother dealt with this type of discrimination. Mrs. Tan speaks to her doctor in her broken English, and the doctor does not provide help to her in the correct manner. She does not receive help until her daughter comes to the office (Tan, 2014, p. 318). Mrs. Tan also suffers from this discrimination from a mirage of different types of people. Tan notes, “[T]he fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (Tan, 2014, pp. 317-318). Mrs. Tan has poor communication skills compared to the standard, and she suffers many trails. This arbitrary standard not only causes a person to receive unwarranted biases, but his speech also becomes mocked and his word becomes void of reasoning because of the way he presents …show more content…
Although a person has potentially insightful ideas, the made-up standards hinder the acceptance of this person’s ideas because the only ideas accepted comes from communication that meets those standards. To people above the language standard, incomplete speech indicates a person has no valuable ideas. Amy Tan once believed this about her own mother. Tan admits, “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” (Tan, 2014, p. 317). Tan believed imperfect speech indicated imperfect thoughts. This type of thinking causes strife in relationships. Even if a person cannot communicate efficiently, his ideas do not deserve to go unheard. He still has valuable insight because every person has a different perspective. Intelligence fails to come from the ability to speak efficiently, but comes from the ability to think and reason efficiently. Tan confirms this with her mother. Tan reports, “She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease—all kinds of things I can’t begin to understand” (Tan, 2014, p. 317). A person with second-rate language does not signify stupidity. Substandard language does not merit discrimination. These standards stunt developments. A group of people fail to grow if a person, with limited speaking abilities