Gloria Anzaldua's How To Tame A Wild Tongue

Although it is nearly impossible to get an entirely accurate count, there exist at least 6,500 languages (Leonard et. al., 59). Something tells me that if language were about something as simple as communication, that number would be smaller. In all actuality, people feel deeply connected to their native languages for another reason. Language and culture are one and the same, and Gloria Anzaldua illustrates this in her piece “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” using examples of changes and suppressions of her language, to represent changes and suppressions of her culture as a whole. As a result, it is exceedingly important that efforts are made towards language and, accordingly, cultural preservation. This is evident not only in the piece itself, but through much of linguistic discourse as well.

Instances of colonization have taken place since the 15th century. Take for example the Portuguese colonization of Haiti. Because the Portuguese were trying to impose their own beliefs and power, they did not want native Haitians and imported African slaves to maintain their old ways of living. They stripped away much of their culture, and along the way, their languages. Imperialists became paranoid that because they could not understand what the people were saying or the Arabic the slaves were literate in, that there must be conspiracies against them. Instead of learning these languages for themselves, legal bans were enforced with physical punishment for the use of native languages. When the natives and slaves began resisting these changes, they began by taking back their language, in turn, taking back their culture