The City College of New York

Brenna Crowe

FIQWS 10111

Oct 19, 2022

Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” rhetorical analysis

Children are influenced by their environment in many different ways. Language is something that can be interpreted and manipulated depending upon the place someone comes from.The  language a person speaks is influenced by their family because those are the first people in their life they learn from. When a baby is born the first 3-5 years of their life they are surrounded by family, which mostly consist of their parents or anyone that may live with them (grandparents, siblings etc). Babies learn things by repetition when they are younger. They are most likely to learn how to say something based on what they hear. If a child grows up in a household where another language is spoken other than English or a kind of dialect they are most likely to understand that way of speaking. When they start school and learn “proper English” many children may because some of the grammar and vocabulary may be new for them. Tan, the author of  “Mother Tongue” who is Chinese American, makes  sense of the multiple “Englishes” in her life and how it impacted her. The argument she was trying to develop was that we all speak different languages unconsciously and that we are categorized by the way we speak. Without these three parts of the essay it was hard to develop the argument because she created an impact in the mind of the audience step by step with the use of personal anecdotes, logical statistics, invoking emotional appeal and using an emotional tone. 

Tan used anecdotes in different parts of the writing. For example, when she talks to her mother she uses simple English. But sometimes she also uses English with wrought grammatical phrases. Tan, the author of  “Mother Tongue” who is Chinese American, makes  sense of the multiple “Englishes” in her life and how it impacted her. She  explains how she would often struggle on English related exams like the SAT or ACT because a lot of the grammar and writing formats being used are not very clear or familiar to her.In her article she talks about times where she and her mother would be talking and they would be speaking in “Broken English”. She gives an example of when her mom was on the phone and the person couldn’t understand her so she[Tan] had to translate(even though the mother was speaking English) so they could understand what she was saying . For Tan the way her mom talks doesn’t seem wrong or incorrect because that is what she grew up hearing  with and understands well. In this case Tan’s mother influenced her way of speaking and understanding the English language. Tan uses her diverse vocabulary to strengthen her writing skills. She becomes a  very successful writer by using all the “Englishes” she learned, especially from her mother. Thus, she used emotional appeal to connect to her audience and achieve her purpose. 

Amy Tan has used different statistics to prove her point. In one of the paragraphs of the essay she said,  “Why there are not more Asian Americans represented in American literature. Why are there few Asian Americans enrolled in creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go into engineering! Well, these are broad sociological questions I can’t begin to answer. But I have noticed in surveys — in fact, just last week — that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English.” Thus she tried to say that many teachers do not support their Asian American students because of their broken English.  However, Tan was really determined to be a writer. Thus, she overcame all the problems and became a successful writer by making her mom proud. 

In spite of being such a successful writer, Tan writes “Mother Tongue” in a really informal tone. She starts her essay saying, “I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others. I am a writer. Through these sentences, Tan reassured the audience that she really loves writing which actually makes her credible to write such an essay. These sentences really created a connection between the readers. The readers became more interested to know what she was trying to convey. If she had started her essay with her accomplishments, the viewers would never understand her life struggles. On the contrary, she started her essay saying that she is not a scholar of English which eases the audience. 

Tan divides her essay into three sections. In the first section of her essay, Tan talks about how English was never her favorite subject in school because she was not always exposed to proper English in the home, and how she never expected herself to become a writer. In the second section of the essay Tan recalls the stories and specific examples of all the time that her mother’s improper English limited the opportunities she was given. In the last part of the essay she said that she was successful because her mother said that her book was easy to read. The different Englishes (para 3) Tan describes in this essay are the English with wrought grammatical phrases and the simple English he uses. It provided her the chance to experience first hand the real meaning behind “broken English”, and understand how non-standard varieties of English have their own rules and shape a community’s sense of identity. Language offers entrance to the community. One of the main goals of language is to communicate with people and to understand them. When someone speaks, he intends a specific purpose. But if his language is different from others in the community, he feels excluded because he can not express himself properly. Thus, the use of personal anecdotes, logical statistics, invoking emotional appeal and using an emotional tone really help Amy Tan to achieve her purpose. 

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