How To Tame A Wild Tongue Language Analysis

Language is the most powerful tool in the human arsenal. Language can be used to build a person up or tear them down. Language serves as the ultimate primary source in any case. Language creates the atmosphere humans immerse themselves in every day. Without language and communication, what do we have? It is strange how something as little as words with such small meanings can be strung together into sentences that hold so much more. Unfortunately, the very structure of many languages is able to create a foundation that purposefully leaves women out and advances men. Women have always been seen as a lesser sex, and men and women alike have consistently used language to oppress the female gender. Susan Sontag in her article, “A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?” and Gloria Anzaldúa in her essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” both discuss the implications of using language as a tool of oppression; however, in “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton reclaims the language used to put women down. These three texts …show more content…
Anzaldúa is a “Chicana” woman and famous novelist, and in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” discusses the mixing of various dialects such as Spanish and English to create a new melting-pot language called Chicano. Chicano can be further categorized into regional dialects, which result in different types of Chicano due to the way English and Spanish are spoken in these areas. Further, Anzaldúa describes a system that attempts to assimilate Chicanos so they no longer have accents or speak their non-standardized Spanish. The system is made up of both American educational institutions and speakers of standard uncorrupted Spanish. Because Chicano is not considered correct Spanish or English, those who were taught to speak these languages correctly in a school setting often insult