Mother Tongue- -Amy Tan

After I browsed the table of contents and saw an essay by Amy Tan, I knew I had to read it. I’ve read her book, The Joy Luck Club, for a report and it was very well written. I could to relate to that novel because of the way she executed some aspects of the Chinese culture. Tan used various schemes and tropes in this essay to give more variety in her writing which also helped me to relate to “Mother Tongue.”

One rhetorical device Tan used was asyndeton. An example of that on page 403, “…grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.” Another example, “…her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts.” There were many words in the sentence with frequent comma usage and no intervening conjunctions.

In the author’s essay, many parts consisted of repeating the same word(s) in the beginning of sentences or clauses, which is the definition of anaphora. “I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions…I am a writer…I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life…” (Pg.402) Tan frequently used anaphora throughout and many times, “I”, the first person point of view was used. Her sentence fluency varied, with many short and choppy sentences and numerous long and fluent ones.

I could relate to “Mother Tongue,” because depending on the situation, the author used different types of “Englishes”. Tan spoke “broken” English with her mother, and a more sophisticated one with other people. I also sometimes speak “broken” English with some of my family (more with my grandmother and infamous uncle). Like the author, I don’t like the term “broken,” because I don’t see it as something needed to be fixed. I actually prefer the term, “Engrish,” (East Asians have a more difficult time pronouncing the letter “L.” Do you get the pun now?) because of the way I usually mix English with some Korean/Chinese words so they can understand my thoughts to a better extent, but that is just me.

Tan did an excellent job of describing society’s perception of people with accents, because I also notice it when I’m with some of my family. “…the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan… She said they would not give her any more information until next time… So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughter…And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English-lo and behold-we had assurances the CAT scan would be found…” Tan’s tone seemed to be on the sarcastic side while describing her mother being discriminated for not speaking properly. She gave me a superb example of how most Americans infer that information from people who don’t speak English fluently is of less quality than people who do.

Overall, Tan excelled in using rhetorical devices. There was a good variety of sentence fluency, there was logical tone, and superior word choice was present. I like the fact that she noticed how people who speak “proper” English may look down on people who don’t. Her essay was witty, realistic, and had many interesting points which I agreed with, even before I read it.