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Rhetorical Analysis Of Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

546 Words3 Pages

Mother Tongue was written by Amy Tan who is famous for her writings of her experiences as a Chinese immigrant growing up and living in American culture. Her primary purpose is to explain to the reader her interpretation of standard English and broken. In her essay Tan shares stories of her mother's broken English and her it affected her life and how people took advantage of her mother's broken English. Tan's intended audience are people who are unaware of people like her mother's limited English who are taken advantage of in everyday life. The experiences Tan shares with reader is an emotion inducing strategy which Tan uses throughout her writing and it is proved to be very effective. One rhetorical strategy she used that stood out to me is antithesis. "And sure enough, the following week..... was shouting at his boss in her impeccable broken English." (398) She uses "impeccable" and "broken" in the same sentence which contradicts her point because the pair are antonyms . Impeccable meaning flawless meanwhile broken means fractured or out of working order. The way Tan uses antithesis to emphasize the idea of contrast by doing so Tan was able to draw the reader's attention but also at the same time to make her sentence more memorable. Another …show more content…

By engaging the audience in the conversation Tan was able to make the audience comfortable and spontaneous. "Du Yusong having business like fruit stand....Chinese age I was nineteen." (397) The way the essay was written in a very personal format the author was able to achieve connection which appealed to pathos which she does best. Her arguments are very direct but yet very personal and also relevant. By engaging the reader in her conversation she was able to put the audience the shoes of the people who was not able to speak perfect English and that makes people who spoke broken English more

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