Comparing Amy Tan's Mother Tongue And James Baldwin

Improved Essays
Understanding someone’s language is a hard task because the culture is an important tool in the most difficult thing in this world. However, the major issue is that the person is still having a major time with a language because the person is not understanding the details. An overall judgement was to be confirmed that the language is to be a major problem. Amy Tan “Mother Tongue” and James Baldwin “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me What is?” explain the facts of language and its purposes. These articles differ in their cultural viewpoint.
In the Tan article, she talks about the book that she published; her mother decided to show up and hear her read her book but that is not the language that she uses. She thinks that everyone

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In the article, Mother Tongue, the author Amy Tan explicitly demonstrates how she has developed her perspectives about language and the way of thinking under the influence of her mother’s limited English skill. The strategies Tan used to support her argument include vivid anecdote, striking contrast, and emotionally appealing parallelism. This journal is going to analyse how those rhetorical devices were being used during the delivery of Tan’s stories, and present my connections with her. At the beginning, Tan employed several sharp contrasts and vivid anecdotes to help her audience interpret her feeling of her mother tongue.…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In her article, “Mother’s tongue”, Amy Tan narrates the changes of cognition of her mother’s tongue based on her own experiences. She begins her essay by introducing herself as a writer instead of a scholar of English, which ingeniously makes a closer connection with readers. She describes three personal anecdotes from different time periods of her lifetime to create a comprehensive view for the definition of “Mother’s tongue”. The first one happened recently at her speech, which is the immediate cause for her to think more about different Englishes she uses in fornt of public and family. She made a comparison of the way she talks to her husband and to the audience.…

    • 338 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The existing conflict with language is to not only about English itself, but also about the relationship between Tan and her mother. It is crucial to understand that Tan’s original mentality was that her mother’s “English reflected the quality of what she had to say (...) and because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect.” More importantly, the voice used in the essay reflects Tan’s own opinions on English, so shifts to a softer tone and enhanced…

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The first time Tan notice of the type of Englishes she spoke was when she was giving a speech about her book, “The Joy Club”, when Tan saw her mother in the audience she remembered one major difference that made the whole speech sound wrong to her, she realized that she had been using the intellectual language that she learned from books, a language she had never used with her mother. The second time she noticed that her English changed was when she was talking to her mother and husband, she said: “not waste money that way” (pg.1) which she describes as an intimate language used only by her family. Tan explains that the language her mother speaks is different than the American English, and although it is difficult to understand her sometimes, her mother actually understands more than one may think when they listening to her speak. When Tan was young, she would often have to call people over the phone and pretend that she was her mother in order to get people to pay attention to her and take her more seriously. For instance, she had to talk to her mother’s stockbroker for not sending a check when he said he was, “I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing,…

    • 1063 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Especially with this type of writing, it is easy to find. “Mother Tongue” evokes many emotions. Readers in a way can empathize with Tan, when she shares the fact that she believes her mother’s broken English has limited her possibilities in life. It is appealing to all those who have experienced difficulty with…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan gives us an insight into a world where diversity in spoken English is wrong. In this case, the limitation that accompanies those who speak the infamous ‘broken’ English. Furthermore, she tells us that the world chooses to believe that those who speak it (imperfect English) are necessarily inferior to its standard counterpart. This discrimination towards various ‘Englishes’ is mainly addressed as a major misinterpretation; one she is deeply concerned about. While it is clear that she giving an insight on her personal experience of mingling in society and how she (or her mother) is perceived, I believe that her intended audience for this piece is for the general public, which would ultimately just be those who share the same experience as her and those with preconceived notions about non-native English speakers.…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this text, tan demonstrates that her mother suffered unequal treatment because her mother didn’t have the ability to speak with the…

    • 1460 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Tan discloses how her mother is very intelligent. She said her mother read Forbes report, listen to Wall Street Week, and also talks everyday with her stockbroker. Tan also explains how is ashamed of her mother’s English speaking, because her mother is a reflection of what she has to say, and her English is limited and imperfect. “Mother Tongue” is an informal essay, because it audience is not only the professors but rather the common people. Amy Tan use informal language to pass message from her book to the intender reader.…

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ebonics Second Language

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages

    • A school board in Oakland, California voted to recognize Ebonics as a second language. This caused an uproar towards the African American communities who felt insulted by the board by comparing Ebonics to another language like Spanish or Chinese. Linguistic anthropologist, Marcyelina Morgan asserts that the African American community thinks that just cause this African American community speaks a variation of English, it doesn’t make them at an intellectual disadvantage and they shouldn’t be treated as such. This example intertwines with the idea of language ideology where people from different social forms speak differently. These African American students in Oakland speak a certain way in which they can’t really change…

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Amy Tan Mother Tongue

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Amy Tan, the author of “mother tongue” expresses what she learned growing up in a home where broken was spoken. She learned about how she spoke different to different people in her life, how people reacted to her mom’s broken English, and how this has affected her life growing up. Growing up, Amy was ashamed of her mother’s “limited English”. Her mother though knew that her English wasn’t very good. Some of Amy’s friends would not completely understand what her mom was saying.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The writers’ method of writing is clear and well thought out, but there is also the matter of what is actually being communicated, as appose to how she gets her thoughts across. While Tan explains the difficulties that her mother has with communicating clearly, she makes it clear that she has an unwavering respect for her mother, regardless of her misgivings and barriers. Although there aren’t many references to this fact directly in the text, it’s a kind of undertone that sets in with the reader, possibly without even being noticed. The writer does an exceptional job conveying this idea subtly, and without depositing it into the text. This is an example of how Tan has honed into her writing skills, while also using her natural abilities and personal identity to communicate…

    • 921 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Language is a tool that helps identify an individual. “If Black English isn't a Language Then Tell Me What is?” by James Baldwin emphasizes on how language defines the person. This is towards people who believe that there's one way to communicate or doesn't want to admit that they speak differently. They don't want to be submerged in the reality that they cannot articulate or they have an accent.…

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Language usage is an essential aspect of living in the world. Language is how we communicate and prosper as we grow. There is not just one language, but many. This does not mean that one person could speak every single language or none at all. All of us, the United States, in particular, demonstrates the ability to speak one or multiple languages.…

    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Language has the power to connect people to their culture, history, and to other people, but language can also isolate a person and make them feel like an outsider to their own culture and family, or can make them feel foreign in their own tongue. Language can also empower a person in ways that will make him or her feel like they can control his or her own destiny. All of theses ideas are explored in The Language of Discretion by Amy Tan and in From Outside In by Barbara Mellix. Both Tan and Mellix feel like outsiders in the language each one uses, find a danger and excitement in knowledge and learning, and find a way to fit in with their respective languages. Barbara Mellix grew up surrounded by black english while her parents and teachers…

    • 1410 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Grounded by Language In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan begins her short story by giving the audience prior knowledge that Tan is not a scholar of English and she is not able to give much more than her past knowledge on the English language. She then proceeds to give the readers an idea of how much she is fascinated by language itself and gives it a grading scale from complex english to simple English. Tan presents her short story by giving the readers a recent experience that made her rethink the past, present, and future.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays