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Tame Wild Tongue

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Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” focuses on the importance of language, specifically, how it shapes a person’s identity. Her publication outlines the different languages Anzaldua speaks that being Chicano Spanish, Pachuco Spanish, Standard Mexican Spanish, and North Mexican dialect. In addition, when asked about her culture, she would say she is mexicana, Chicana, tejana, and raza. Her languages intersected with her identity as she considered herself all four. Consequently, after reading Anzaldua’s story, I have contemplated my languages that intersect. As a result, my languages are Spanish, English, and Spanglish.
The first language I learned was Spanish as it was my parent’s primary language. It was the language I used to interact with people and entered elementary with. I would say words such as hola, como estas to greet people or me puedes ayudar when asking for help when I was at school. Or when at home, I would say tengo hambre to tell my mother I was hungry and no me siento bien when I felt sick. Overall, at that time Spanish was the only language I could use and I was accepted by others as I used it. I live in a Latino community where I share Spanish with others. It was until I went …show more content…

The languages shift depending on the person I am talking to. When I am speaking with my parents, I would only speak Spanish. When I am presenting, participating, or talking to a teacher I speak English. When I am speaking with my friends or people who know both languages and are familiar with Spanglish that is when I would use it. Being able to shift my languages and balance them out, I become a more bilingual person as my ability to speak the languages get stronger. Also, my skills of communicating improve as I can talk to anyone in my community or on the outside of my home. Overall, my three languages shape my identity and improve my

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Rhetorical Analysis on Anzaldua’s How to Tame a Wild Tongue The passage How to Tame a Wild Tongue is a very defensive and straightforward argumentative essay which defends her language and the people who speak it against the discrimination that the author herself has experienced first hand (Ethos). From this text we can infer that the author is most likely from hispanic descent as she is speaking spanish a lot of the time throughout the text. This text mainly speaks about the discrimination many Mexican-Americans suffer because they are spanish speaking.

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Gloria Anzaldúa, in the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (1987), claims her experiences as a Chicano taught her that her culture was not looked at highly in comparison to the English language. Anzaldúa argues her view about her Chicano language by giving examples of both cultures Chicano Mexican and American cultures. Anzaldúa’s purpose is to inform her audience on how it is to grow up in a Chicano speaking family. Anzaldúa writes in a frustrating tone throughout the story of her life experiences. Thesis: Anzaldúa use of her personal experiences, and Music, Film and Literature are relevant sufficient and

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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.

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Anzaldúa was a Mexican American who was a well-known writer and had a major impact on the fields of queer, feminist, and cultural theory. Her most famous work is Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza which includes poems, essays, and short stories. Anzaldúa was no stranger to the use of literary theories in her writing, which is evident in her short story “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Here, the author uses a combination of feminist, reader-response, and psychoanalytic theory to show the struggle of being oneself when they’re Mexican-American. Through the use of feminist theory, she explains how a female is labeled as an “habladora” when she tries to voice out her opinion about something; reader-response theory provides the reader with an understanding of the struggles of self-identity, which they are able to relate to, especially Mexican-Americans; and lastly, psychoanalytic theory illuminates on her childhood experiences, which could explain why Anzaldúa believes in what she does, such as the idea that Anglo people have tried to tame her tongue—in other words, her language.

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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.”

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