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Relationship between language and identity
Relationship between language and identity
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This is a problem that may be passed unnoticed because many of us may believe that this is no longer a problem in our society but sadly keeps happening today. Through her use of pathos, by telling her story, the author is persuading people not to discriminate based on the language others speak. Her purpose is to inform the reader about this issue and hopefully help prevent it from continuing to happen. Anzaldua adopts a declamatory tone in order to help her
Written by Gloria Anzaldua, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, is an opinion easy , a retrospection of her past and a story about identity and recognition of a wild tongue. The following is a rhetorical analysis and personal response of this easy . My analysis will be divided into 4 separate parts including intended audience, main claim, purpose and situation. (a) Intended audience : The first thing that anyone who even skims through this easy would notice is Anzaldua’s multi-lingual language use.
The power of language We all have some form of language limitations, no matter where we come from and what our background is. “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua both share similar themes in their stories that demonstrate how they both deal with how different forms of the same language are portrayed in society. In both stories they speak about what society declares the right way of speech and having to face prejudgment, the two authors share their personal experiences of how they’ve dealt with it.
My Rhetorical Analysis Language is a part one’s identity and culture, which allows one to communicate with those of the same group, although when spoken to someone of another group, it can cause a language barrier or miscommunication in many different ways. In Gloria Anzaldua’s article, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, which was taken from her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she is trying to inform her readers that her language is what defines her. She began to mention how she was being criticized by both English and Spanish Speakers, although they both make up who she is as a person. Then, she gave convincing personal experiences about how it was to be a Chicana and their different types of languages. Moreover, despite the fact that her language was considered illegitimate, Anzaldua made it clear that she cannot get rid of it until the day she dies, or as she states (on page 26) “Wild tongues can’t be, they can only be cut out.”
“The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María” by Judith Ortiz Cofer and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan depict the endeavors people take on in an attempt to integrate into society. Cofer demonstrates how stereotypes of Latina women have led others to misjudge her and explains the difficulty she had disassociating herself from those stereotypes. Tan demonstrates that the “broken” English her mother speaks has led others to think less of her and disregard her. One’s appearance instantaneously causes others to judge them. For some it is easier to blend in and be accepted by their community, but what is it that keeps some people from assimilating, and what effect does their otherness have on them?
He supports this argument by telling his own story of being forced to learn English by the bilingual education system. The experience he had learning English made him experience great embarrassment, sadness, and change. Rodriguez concludes his experience by discussing how English had changed his personal life at home: “We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close;no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.” By learning English, Rodriguez’s family is finally able to integrate into society without language barriers.
Class ESL 5 In the article, ”My English” by Julia Alvarez, the author wrote about her experience as she learn to speak English. Spanish was her mother tongue and struggled to speak English in the early phases. She thought that English was a form of Spanish, as there are different dialects in Spanish. Her parents spoke English when they didn’t want her and her siblings to know what was going on.
My parents are both immigrants from Haiti. I was born in America. Growing up, my parents spoke Creole, the national language of Haiti, and English at home. As I got older my resistence to speak their native tongue began to grow. I don’t know why I began to reject the language as my own.
Language is used to convey a message as well as connect people to a particular culture or ethnicity he or she identifies with. People who share the same language share a bond and pass their history through language. In chapter one of The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom Joanne Kilgour Dowdy speak about growing up in Trinidad and her mother insisting on her speaking in the colonizer's language rather than her native Trinidadian language. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy felt as if her identity was being pushed to the side when she was forced to speak “Colonized English” when she was at school or around the social elite of her community, and felt ridiculed from her peers for speaking proper as if she was white or of the elite social class. Dowdy major concern was how to have the freedom to go back and forth from home, language to the public language without feeling judged from both sides of her
Summary of "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan In "Mother Tongue, Amy Tan writes about how her mother 's broken English affects her life. She begins this narrative essay by talking about the day she became aware of the different forms of English that she was using at home and during formal events. Amy says, "The talk was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her" (Tan 1).
What makes a piece of writing effective? A piece of writing includes many things that make it effective, such as the style that appeals to the reader and rhetorical devices used in the writing that make it much more interesting. In this piece of writing titled “ How to tame a wild tongue “ includes many of these things. Even starting with the title it makes me curious as to what the piece will be about. There are two devices Anzaldua uses effectively in her essay which are anecdotes and parallel structure.
Our identity is a place upon many attributes of a human being. Whether the person is someone who goes on promoting themselves to the world or not, and it shows how people communicate to others around them. Language is one of the main components that unveils the person’s identity in their everyday life, and they are many different ways to approach a person’s language. Relating to the article of Yiyun Li, “To Speak is to Blunder,” she knows two languages that has its positive and negative outcomes in her life. I to relate to her understanding of language, but a different view of what language means to me.
Gloria Anzaldúa’s “La Prieta” tell her struggles with identity by talking about prejudices she dealt with while growing up. These prejudices, such as colorism, sexism, and heteronormativity, were not only held by people outside her social groups but within them as well. Anzaldúa goes on to explain the way identity is formed by intersecting factors and not only one aspect of someone’s life therefore denying one factor of identity can cause isolation and self-hatred. The fact that Anzaldúa developed faster than is deemed normal the first struggle in forming her identity.
“My Mother’s Tongue” written by Zavi Kang Engles is a personal essay about the importance of culture. The author brings the reader through stories of her life, all relating to who she is as a Korean American woman and her struggles to connect the life she had in Korea to the new one she found in America. One thing that would stay consistent throughout is her connection to the Korean language, taking us with her as it slips away when she grows older only to try to find it again in adulthood. Therefore, analyzing the essay through the lens of her connection to the Korean language makes it apparent that a person's culture is an important part of accepting and understanding their identity.
After reading Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, my perspective changed about the struggles for people who are not as good at English. All throughout this article Tan uses personal experience from her mom to show the readers the struggle while also using primary sources to back up her claim. All the evidence backs up her initial claim and as the reader your perspective changes after reading about how she personally was effected. The author 's main claim of Mother Tongue is to persuade people so respect people who struggle with English because she has serval personal connections, she has fact based proof, and she is an experienced writer on this topic and in general. All throughout the reading she uses many personal stories and personal experiences on how difficult it was for her mother to go through her everyday life.