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How To Tame A Wild Tongue

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In this essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua she talks about her language, specifically her Spanish language in which it isn’t accepted to not only in the American culture but to her fellow Latino and Latina people. “Pocho, cultural traitor, you’re speaking English, you’re ruining the Spanish language” (WOR, 27). I am writing a biography telling about how I also have encountered not being accepted by people of the American culture. I will also discuss the variations in both Anzaldua’s life as well as my life.
Being a young foreign girl in elementary school wasn’t too bad. Everyone especially the teacher made sure you felt included throughout the whole class period and school year. Everyone was so nice and so welcoming (“I could get used to this”). As time went on I became more comfortable with sharing my African experiences with everyone. But as I started attending St. Andrews middle school everything began to change. Everyone was beginning to change physically and mentally. What seemed so innocent in elementary school wasn’t acceptable in middle school. Teachers and administrators expected you to be a big kid now. No more of the childishness but it seemed like the absolute opposite was …show more content…

One being that she knew her language, she was able to speak her language even if it wasn’t the standard Spanish that the Latino culture respected. I know absolutely nothing about my language. I am not able to speak it at all but I do understand a few words like “Bawo” “Ek’aro” “Ek’asan”. But speaking my language fluently is something my parents never taught me. There is also no different variations of Yoruba like for Spanish Anzaldua mentions how there are different variations like Chicano Spanish, North Mexican Spanish, Tex-Mex and Pachuco. In Nigeria there are different languages for the different cities depending on where you’re from but none of them are merely

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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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In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” Gloria Anzaldua describes her experiences as a self proclaimed Chicana. She uses rhetorical strategies, including anecdotes, imagery, and appeals to both ethos and pathos, to argue that language is more than just a means of communication; it is part of one’s culture, identity, and self-expression, Gloria Anzaldua opens her argument with an anecdote. The anecdote about the dentist introduces the concept of the wild tongue and how it can be taken literally and symbolically. Another effect the anecdote has is that it hooks the reader and gets them interested in the essay. Through the anecdote Anzaldua appeals to ethos, establishing the ethical ideas of her purpose with taming her wild tongue and to establish her identity as a Chicano speaker.

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Borderlands/La Frontera. United States: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Print. In the article, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldua, a Mexican American and a scholar of Chicana cultural theory, argues that language is part of her identity, and she can not truly accept and be proud of herself unless she accepts and is proud of the languages she speaks first.

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The film, Lemon Grove Incident, depicts the hardships a community of Mexican Americans endured as education, a tool commonly used for upward mobility and inclusion into the dominant American society, became another form of racialization against them. In this community discourse driven by stereotypes and actions geared by academic profiling, denied Mexican Americans students from co-existing in the same school as their white peers. Members of the Lemon Grove PTA and School Board, believed that segregation of the two races would create better learning environments for both parties because the Mexican students lacked full ability of speaking the English language. Mexican American students were targeted because their ability of speaking Spanish

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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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That expanded her horizon to here feminine nature. Her Chicano Spanish was considered a ‘bastard’ language to Spanish speaker. Anzaldua thought that women in her culture should take pride in their selves and their language. Her language is not the same as the known Spanish and she will not change her speech patterns. Anzaldua says “I am my

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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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This then leads to the problem that in this public life being bilingual or not being able to speak English was still being discriminated against. In public life, people need to be more accepting of others who speak different languages and also not contribute to getting rid of their language in America. Espadas claims culture is important and people who are a part of the English-Only movement are causing so many people to abandon their culture. While speaking out about the cultural warfare in America, Espada declares, “There are too many in this country who would amputate the Spanish tongue. Given this cultural aggression, it is astonishing that more Latinos have not lost their Spanish altogether, that so many Latinos still speak as much Spanish as they do” (Espada 26-31).

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“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is a chapter five from the book titled Borderlands La Frontera, written by Gloria Anzaldua. In this chapter, Gloria told us how she struggled about speaking in English and her Chicano immigration life as a Hispanic living in the United States. Firstly, she discussed how the gender and cultural impacted of the language. Next, she also discussed how the Spanish language changed and evolved. At the end, Gloria also told us how the language in terms of learning that is comes together in one.

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“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?

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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.

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“Se Habla Español” by Tanya Barrientos helped me truly identify what it means to be a proud Hispanic. As she explained, her experiences of being Spanish challenged Latina led to her being ashamed. Barrientos’ experiences reminded me of my experiences with Spanish. As I reflect on my own experiences, I can say that being a proud Hispanic is not about speaking perfect Spanish. I realized this when my extended family assumed I spoke Spanish; my mother threatened to pretend to not understand me when I spoke English.

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In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldua argues for the permission to define her own Chicano/ Feminist voice without being hindered by stereotypes and limitations. Gloria argues that, “wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out,” but specifically argues that different accents stir up one big culture. She says “We oppress each other trying to oust Chicano each other, tying to be the “real” Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos.” meaning each Spanish is a variation of two languages, and that there’s different ways she speaks to others in certain situations like having two tongues. Gloria also argues that she shouldn’t be embarrassed by her language and accent by saying “I am my language” meaning her language is what makes her special and unique.

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I was presented with a whole new curriculum and teaching styles. Needless to say, my school grades went down since I was still adapting to a new language and school system. My first two school years in the United States were by far my worse but that did not stop me from succeeding. Even though I was young, I was able to understand what I was going through. I knew that I needed to not just put in the same effort as other kids my age but far more.

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