mother tongue amy tan analysis essay

A Summary and Analysis of Amy Tan’s ‘Mother Tongue’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Mother Tongue’ is an essay by Amy Tan, an American author who was born to Chinese immigrants in 1952. Tan wrote ‘Mother Tongue’ in 1990, a year after her novel The Joy Luck Club was a runaway success. In the essay, Tan discusses her relationship with language, and how her mother’s influence has shaped her use of English, as well as her attitude to it.

You can read ‘Mother Tongue’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Amy Tan’s essay below.

‘Mother Tongue’: summary

Amy Tan begins her essay by offering her personal opinions on the English language. She recalls a recent talk she gave, when, upon realising her mother was in the audience, she was confronted with the fact that the formal standard English she was using in the public talk was at odds with the way she spoke at home with her mother. She then contrasts this with a moment when she was walking down the street with her mother and she used the more clipped, informal English she naturally uses with her mother, and her husband.

Tan calls this a ‘language of intimacy’. She points out that her mother is intelligent and reads things which Tan herself cannot begin to understand. But many people who hear her mother speak can only partially understand what she is saying, and some even say they can understand nothing of what she says, as if she were speaking pure Chinese to them.

Tan calls this clipped informal language her ‘mother tongue’, because it was the first language she learned and it helped to shape the way she saw the world and made sense of it.

Tan notes the difficulty of finding a term to describe the style of English her mother, as a Chinese immigrant to the United States, speaks. Many of the terms, such as ‘broken’ or ‘limited’, are too negative and imply her English is imperfect.

She acknowledges that when she was growing up, she was ashamed of the way her mother spoke. Her mother, too, was clearly aware of how her use of the language affected how seriously people took her, for she used to get her daughter to phone people and pretend to be ‘Mrs Tan’.

She observes that her mother is treated differently because of the way she speaks. She recounts a time when the doctors at the hospital were unsympathetic towards her mother when they lost the results of the CAT scan they had undertaken on her brain, but as soon as the hospital – at her mother’s insistence – called her daughter, they issued a grovelling apology.

Amy Tan also believes her mother’s English affected her daughter’s school results. Tan acknowledges that, whilst she did well in maths and science, subjects with a single correct answer, she was less adept at English. She struggled with tests which asked students to pick a correct word to fill in the blanks in a sentence because she was distracted by the imaginative and poetic possibilities of other words.

Indeed, Tan conjectures that many Asian American children are probably encouraged to pursue careers in jobs requiring maths and science rather than English for this reason. But because she is rebellious and likes to challenge people’s assumptions about her, Tan bucked this trend. She majored in English at college and began writing as a freelancer.

She began writing fiction in 1985, and after several false starts trying to find her own style and idiom, she began to write with her mother in mind as the ideal reader for her stories. Indeed, her mother read drafts of her work.

And Tan drew on all the Englishes , plural, that she knew: the ‘broken’ English her mother used, the ‘simple’ English Tan used when talking to her mother, the ‘watered-down’ Chinese her mother used, and her mother’s ‘internal’ language which conveyed her passion, intent, imagery, and the nature of her thoughts. When her mother told her that what she had written was easy to read, Tan knew that she had succeeded in her aims as a writer.

‘Mother Tongue’: analysis

The title of Amy Tan’s essay is a pun on the expression ‘mother tongue’, referring to one’s first language. But Tan’s language, or ‘tongue’, has been shaped by her actual mother, whose first language (or mother tongue) was not English, but Chinese.

The different forms of English that mother and daughter speak are also a product of their backgrounds: whilst Tan’s mother is a Chinese immigrant to America, Tan was born in the United States and has grown up, and been educated, in an English-speaking culture.

Much of Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club is about daughters and their relationships with their mothers. But Tan’s interest in language, both as a cultural marker and as a way of expressing thought and personality, is also a prevailing theme of the novel.

In this respect, if the parable ‘ Feathers from a Thousand Li Away ’ acts as preface to the novel, ‘Mother Tongue’, in effect, acts as a kind of postscript. It helps us to understand the way Tan approaches and uses language within the stories that make up The Joy Luck Club .

An overarching theme of Tan’s novel is mothers emigrating to America in the hope that their daughters will have better lives than they did. This is a key part of ‘Feathers from a Thousand Li Away’, and it helps us to understand Tan’s conflicted attitude towards her mother’s use of language as explored in ‘Mother Tongue’.

Many of the mothers in The Joy Luck Club , such as Betty St. Clair in ‘The Voice from the Wall’, feel isolated from those around them, never at home in America, and hyper-aware of their outsider status, despite becoming legal permanent citizens in the country. Tan’s autobiographical revelations in ‘Mother Tongue’ show us that her own mother struggled to be taken seriously among Americans, and Tan diagnoses this struggle as a result of her mother’s different way of speaking.

Tan, by contrast, used standard English – what used to be referred to, in loaded phrases, as ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ English – and was thus able to succeed in getting herself, and by extension her mother, taken seriously by others. Language is thus more than just a cultural marker: Tan reveals, in ‘Mother Tongue’, the extent to which it is a tool of power (or, depending on the use, powerlessness), particularly for those from migrant backgrounds.

In this connection, it is noteworthy that Tan chooses to focus on the school tests she undertook before concluding that her mother’s ‘broken’ style of English has been misunderstood – not just literally (by some people who’ve known her), but in terms of the misleading perceptions of her it has led others to formulate.

The class tests at school which reduced English proficiency to an ability to recognise a ‘correct’ answer are thus contrasted with Tan’s resounding final words of ‘Mother Tongue’, which see her seeking to capture the passion of her mother, the ‘nature of her thoughts’, and the imagery she uses: all things which her daughter has clearly inherited a respect for, and which school tests fail to capture or observe.

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Mother Tongue

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Summary and Study Guide

Summary: “mother tongue”.

“Mother Tongue” explores Amy Tan’s relationship with the English language, her mother, and writing. This nonfiction narrative essay was originally given as a talk during the 1989 State of the Language Symposium; it was later published by The Threepenny Review in 1990. Since then, “Mother Tongue” has been anthologized countless times and won notable awards and honors, including being selected for the 1991 edition of Best American Essays .

The original publication of “Mother Tongue,” which this study guide refers to, breaks the essay into three sections. In the first Tan briefly primes the reader on her relationship with “different Englishes” (7). Tan bridges the first and second parts of the essay with descriptions of her “mother’s English,” or her “mother tongue” (7). In the second section Tan describes the impact her mother’s language had on her; Tan’s mother is a Chinese immigrant who often relied on her daughter to produce “perfect English” (7). In the concluding section Tan then connects her mother’s English to Tan’s own choices regarding writing style and career.

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In the initial section of “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan locates her position as “a writer… someone who has always loved language” (7). She describes the multiple Englishes that she uses, from formal academic language to the English she uses with her mother to the English she uses at home with her husband. The section concludes with Tan’s description of her mother’s “expressive command of English” (7), which is in conflict with her mother’s fluency in the language. Although her mother might speak English that is difficult for native speakers to understand, to Tan, her mother’s language is “vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery” (7).

As Tan moves through the second section of “Mother Tongue,” she describes some of the more difficult aspects of being raised by a parent who spoke English that others struggled to understand. Tan references the oft-used language of “broken” English and suggests that her mother’s English and way of speaking, despite its obvious interpersonal and social limitations (including harming Tan’s performance on such metrics as standardized tests), provided Tan a different semantic way of understanding the world.

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The final section of “Mother Tongue” transitions into personal reflection as Tan describes how she has reckoned with being raised by her mother in a xenophobic society. As a writer, Tan only found success when she moved away from more proper, academic register and instead wrote “in the Englishes [she] grew up with” (8). The essay concludes with Tan’s mother’s opinion about Tan’s most famous novel, The Joy Luck Club , in which Tan attempted to write in this fashion. Her mother’s “verdict: ‘So easy to read’” (8).

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Mother Tongue

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

“Mother Tongue” is an autobiographical essay in which Amy Tan identifies the varied nature of language in her everyday life. As a result of her mother ’s presence at a talk for her book, The Joy Luck Club , Tan becomes acutely aware of the many different “ Englishes ” she speaks. Tan realizes that this is the first time her mother has heard her daughter speak in such a setting and with such a professional tone. Tan associates the English she speaks at events with the standardized forms of English she learned in school.

Tan tells stories of her past, contrasting the English she uses at home—her “mother tongue”—with standard English. Tan speaks in the same English as her mother when they are alone and in front of her husband—he is used to her changes in speech and does not detect Tan’s shift when she responds to her mother. Referencing a recent conversation she recorded, Tan relays a story her mother shared about a Chinese political gangster; parts of the transcript perfectly capture the rhythm of her mother’s speech and the detail she provides. Tan refrains from describing her mother’s English as “broken” because it suggests that her mother’s knowledge is somehow lacking. Instead, she argues that it shows the limited perceptions others have of her mother. Her mother’s stockbroker and doctors demonstrate their own closed-mindedness, refusing to take her seriously and requiring Tan to facilitate conversations on her mother’s behalf.

Tan describes her own childhood experiences with standardized English. She struggled with her English studies because of the way her mother’s use of language influenced her internal problem-solving skills, and Tan illustrates her frustration and the way she used this frustration as motivation. Instead of admitting defeat, Tan vowed to “master” the English language, assimilating to standardized English and forgoing the use of her “mother tongue” outside interactions with her mother. It isn’t until the start of her writing career with The Joy Luck Club that she realizes that the English she writes in is unapproachable and difficult to read. As such, in finding her way back to her “mother tongue,” Tan shifts her focus to an imagined reader, using a voice that she has grown to love and accept—the voice of her mother.

Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” : Rhetorical Analysis

In the essay Mother Tongue , Amy Tan believes that everyone speaks different languages in certain settings and are labeled by the way they speak. The author interested by how language is utilized in our daily life” and uses language as a daily part of her work as a writer. Throughout her life she recognizes her struggles applying proper English instead of the broken used in her home.

She became aware of how she spoke was when giving a lecture about her book The Joy Club and realized her mother who was in the audience did not understand what was being discussed. This was because she never used proper English in her home or talking to her mother. It is her belief utilizing proper English and broken English is essential in communication depending who you are talking to. The next time she noticed this about her English was when walking with her parents, she made the statement “not waste money that way”. This is due to the language barrier in her household that is used only by her family. Her mother was raised in China and spoke Mandarin her English always came across as broken to everyone outside the family, which made it hard for her to understand when someone spoke proper English.

Amy insured everyone that met her mother’s that even though her English seem “broken” it does not reflect her intelligence. Even though people placed this label on her mother of the way she spoke she rejected the idea that her mother English is “limited”. She highlights the fact that even her mother recognizes that her opportunities and interactions in life are limited by the English language. Amy Tan realizes that how you communicate within the family dynamic, especially for immigrant families plays a large role in in the growth of the child. It allowed her to acknowledge that perhaps her family’s language had an effect on the opportunities she was provided in her life. For instance in her experience, she notices that Asian students actually do better in math tests than in language tests, and she questions whether or not other Asian students are discouraged from writing or directed in the direction of math and science. Tan changed her major from pre-med to English and she decided to become a freelance writer even though her boss told her she couldn’t write. She eventually went on to write fiction , she celebrates the fact that she did not follow the expectations that people had of her because of her struggle with writing and language. With her mother as an influence Tan decided to write her stories for people like her, people with “broken” or “limited” English. In the essay , Mother Tongue, Amy Tan goes to great length to persuade the readers of her experiences being multicultural family that the effectiveness and the price an individual pays by insuring that their ideas and intents do not change due to the way they speak, whether they use “perfect” or “broken” English. Tan also clarifies to the readers that her “mother’s expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands”. She uses many examples to take readers into her life experiences to discover this truth. She utilizes the first person view throughout the essay and adds her firsthand knowledge of growing up with a multiple languages spoken in the home. This was done to validate of her argument and shine a light on the importance of this issue in her life as well as her culture.

The examples she uses is when she tells a story of her mother’s struggles with a stockbroker because of her “broken “ English, Tan quotes her mother’s words “Why he not send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money”. Amy Tan did this to give the readers an idea on how this particular situation played out and how her mother’s English affected outcome. The authors writing is also very emotional and somewhat angry at throughout the essay , it makes her and her family very sympathetic figures. Tan’s specific concern is being shunned by both white-America and the Asian population. This also further her strengthen her views that puts her in an equally frustrating position from the perspective of Americans with the stereotypical views of Asians. Many people in college looked at her funny for being an English major instead of Math as a major. Individuals of Chinese decent are associated with math or science and that is because of the stereotyping that Asian receive. This is based on studies being conducted that a majority of Asians do in fact excel in mathematics and sciences.

Amy also observed that many of her instructors towards math and science as well and was even told by a former boss that writing was not biggest attribute and should focus more onto her account management skills. The author states that “perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me”. The author utilized the nonfiction essay form to discuss how language played a major role in her life. This also allowed her to show the readers how her relationship with the English language and her mother has changed over the years. In her essay , Mother Tongue Amy Tan describes numerous incidences that helped shape her views as a writer. The uses of first persons account to describe her experiences with her mother and how her mother’s use of the English language influenced her upbringing, such as a story her mother once told her about a guest at her mother’s wedding “Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off-the-street kind. He is Du like Du Zong – but not Tsung-ming Island people….That man want to ask Du Zong father take him in like become own family. Du Zong father wasn’t look down on him, but didn’t take seriously, until that man big like become a mafia. Now important person, very hard to inviting him. She may have chosen to focus on this type sentence structure because it gave the readers sense of awareness into her life and also to make it easier for them to understand the factors that shaped her style as a writer. In conclusion after reading Mother Tongue, it became very apparent that her mother played an important part in the author’s life. However, after further reading, I determined that she could have been addressing a specific group of people. She is also explaining her story to people who read her works, since so much of her literature seems to be influenced by how she views of the English language. Amy Tan goes to great lengths in the essay to give bits and pieces of how she overcame the perception that many people had of her, since she did not do as well with English-related schooling as she did with the Sciences, or Math.

“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan: Overview and Analysis

In the article Mother Tongue , Amy Tan, a daughter of Chinese immigrants brought up in America, describes the importance of the mother tongue in her life. The definition of “mother tongue” relates to the language of the country of her origin, as well as the tongue her mother speaks. The latter is a mixture of Chinese of her mother’s thoughts and English of her expression of them. The author argues that such a blend of two languages used in the family where she grew up, shaped the way she perceived the realities of life, expressed those realities, and made sense of the world.

To give evidence of it, Tan provides three different aspects of the influence of the language of her mother on her. Throughout the paper, this impact seems to be negative, which is proved by the two examples, such as her wrong perception of her mother’s thought ability, and prevention of success at school. However, in the end, Tan comes to the third aspect, stating that, ultimately, she could make these limitations beneficial to her. In this essay, it will be demonstrated that such a turn from the negative points to the positive makes the paper persuasive, and the whole argument complete.

The first point discovered in the article is the author’s perception of her mother, along with the observed public opinion about her. As Tan writes, in her view, mother’s imperfect English “reflected the quality of what she had to say,” and “her thoughts were imperfect” as well as their expression (p. 79). Moreover, the author finds proof of her view as she observes the impact of “broken” English on her mother’s public life, diminishing the account given to her, and the quality of service she is provided with. Though Tan describes her mother’s experience, it is implied that the author also could be in the same situation, had she been at the same level of language proficiency as her mother is.

The second negative aspect of the influence of the “limited” English of her mother is her inability to be successful in English class at school. As the author notices, while “math is precise,” language is always “a matter of opinion and personal experience” (Tan, p. 80). Thus, having at the background of the consciousness her mother’s ways of expression, she could not provide the right answers as they after were appearing in her mind as “the most bland combinations of thoughts” (Tan, p. 80). Besides, the language she is used to has influenced not only her language skills but also her perception of life, more associative than logical.

At last, the author comes to the point where she decided to choose English as the primary occupation. Despite the challenges and public perception of her English, she turned to creative writing as her profession. That was the time she realized “how much Chinese she was,” and started to observe “all the Englishes” she grew up with to improve her writing (Tan, p. 77). As she describes, all she was writing started to be addressed in her mind to the particular reader, who was no one else than her mother. She considered different variants of English: the one she used to speak to her mother, and her mother spoke to her; her translation of mother’s Chinese, and her mother’s translation. However, the most important was that she tried to discover the mother’s “internal language,” having understood that her initial assumption of the equality of thought and expression was wrong. It seems Tan was successful in it, having heard her mother, with her limited skills, saying that her quite complicated book is easy to read.

In conclusion, it might be argued that Tan is convincing in her argumentation and demonstrating different sides of the mother tongue’s influence on her life. Three aspects that she uses as evidence for the argument are considerable and typical, and the right succession of them makes the paper truly persuasive. The article, thus, demonstrates success in overcoming the challenges of “mother tongue” and turning them into benefits, providing an inspiring example for the readers.

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” Fields of Reading: Motives for Writing , edited by David Hamilton, et al., St. Martin’s Press, 2001, pp. 77-82.

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Power of Language

“Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan, tells a story about Tan and her mother. The essay relates the differences and conflict between Chinese and American cultures. She uses her own way, which is writing, to make a bridge between these two cultures, because she thinks that language has power that we can’t imagine. In fact, Tan wants to break the stereotype that Asian people can’t do well in the liberal arts but do well in math and science. She enjoys writing papers to share ideas with readers.  Also she notes that it is not only useful to gain others’ attention in the world but also provides self-improvement for one's life. She gives details of her experiences with her mother, particularly about her mother’s use of English. In her essay, Amy Tan mentions her mother’s “limited English.” Even though Tan speaks English well, she was always able to know what her mother meant when she spoken “broken” English. Through Tan's use of archetype, satire, pathos and dialogue, she demonstrates that language has power and you can use this power to express your feelings and experiences to others.

 At the beginning of the essay, Tan points out she doesn’t want to be a scholar instead of being a writer, because she can’t give us more than “personal opinions on the English language and its variation in this country or others"(466). Her purpose is clear to show that she has a lot of thoughts about her feelings on the way she learned English in school but can also speak the same broken English as her mother.

  She uses an archetype to explain what the “power of language” is “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.”(466) The meaning of this statement is that the uses of language are different. Everyone has a mother tongue and uses it in daily life, but how to use language's power to make you a success is also important. We should know how to use it to persuade others of our point of view, make a presentation, teach others more knowledge from your own study, etc. ”Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all-all the Englishes I grew up with.” Here, my trade refers to her writing. Language has become an important part in her life. It is helpful in her job and continues using it in the following life. We have responsibilities to learn well on our languages which include our mother tongue and other language. We can see she uses “Englishes” in plural form which is exposed that in her ideas, English can has many types of shapes or spoken ways. For Tan, "Englishes" means one is Chinese-English, the other one is perfect English. I learn that language is needed in our life. No matter the language we use, the main point is that can express feelings well to others, and then it means you have using power of language. The way she grew up is the way she wants to get used to. We must accept whatever we have and try to improve it if we can.

Later on, Tan uses satire to express her experience with the differences. between the English she learned and the English she speaks with her mother. “A speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrase, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized form, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of Standard English that I have learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not uses at home with my mother.”(466) The satire is appearing in the last two phrases, they meant that the perfect English which Tan learned in school is not adopted in her home, and she will use her mother’s English to speak to her mother. In fact, she can speak more Standard English from what she learned from books and school, but she knows if she speaks perfect English, her mother may not know what she is talking about. When she writes these sentences, I strongly feel that she explores a problem that the type of English she uses depending on making others’ knows her meaning.

   Language can make people become closer, for instance, “our language of intimacy,” and “a different sort of English that relates to family talk” (466). People should not to be ashamed of broken English. Language is a tool so that we can express our feelings and share your experiences. Indeed, Tan uses different ways of spoken or written “Englishes” to present her thoughts in order to let more people better understand her. The reader must realize the importance of the power of language behind this appeal.

  She uses pathos to help the reader understand and relate to her background with her mother tongue. For example, "But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural"(467). Most of time, she speaks to her mother and learns her tone or spoken mode. “Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, and full of observation and imagery”(467). Tan is feeling comfortable with her mother's English. She thinks that though her mother can’t speak perfect English, she still has thoughts and knowledge. Someone who can’t speak perfect English is not believed to be equal or to have thoughts and knowledge. However, it's not true. It’s just hard for them to present their thoughts clearly to others.

 In addition, Tan states "That was the language that helped me shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world"(467). This sentence exhibits the way she felt the world and got involved in English. Later, Tan used "as if" many times "as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed," "as if it lacked a certain wholeness and sound ness," "as if everything is limited"(467). She is pointing out that people who speak broken English seems weird American. American people think that those people who speak broken English are stupid, and that what they do is meaningless and they lack thoughts.

 Tan provides a dialogue between her mother and her mother's stockbroker. Sometimes, Tan knows that her mother’s English is not easily understood by others, because she doesn’t speak perfect English. Her mother said “Why he doesn’t send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lies to me, losing me money.”(468) Then, Tan answers her in Standard English. We can see that her mother always get in troubles with her “broken” English. Despite this, she even shouts at her stockbroker, but she doesn’t realize that her English is hard for others to make sense of. This event exemplifies that her stockbroker is an American who is not respecting her mother. He pretends to ignore on her mother who has earned money from her business. Her mother strives for the money she should get from her stock. This shows her mother is a bravery person. This also implies that how the language we speak can affect how someone looks at us. Though she speaks "her impeccable broken English"(468), she has right to receive what she is worth to get.  Tan uses this dialogue to show people who speak broken English are not different from others and they should be treated as equal and should be protected under the constitution. It's unfair that American people always look down on people who speak broken English.

 Therefore, Tan decides to learn much more about perfect English, because she doesn’t want her language to become a block to express her feelings to others. Once you have ideas you need to share them with others. Using the perfect language is directly makes the ideas make sense to them. In another point, she also wants to get involved education, because language is making her open mind and get a large view on the world. She states that "I sought to preserve the essence,"(470) here she directly emphasizes the significant of writing the story about her mother which is "I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythm of her speech and the nature of her thoughts"(470). The shape of language in Tan's brain is describe by her in details. We can see how language means to her.  

With an education, she can write or speak in perfect English and she can share more of her ideas and experiences with us. For the reader, we can see Tan has set a goal to herself as let more people know about the power of language and try hard to get it. When we want to gain agreement from others, we persuade them using our language in spoken and written form. Tan doesn't show that she is a good writer or a good student. She doesn't write it to show that Asian people are not only good at math and science. She only wants to tell reader how the power of language is used to communicate with others. When we known Tan's purpose well, we can use our own language power directly to our family and our jobs.

 In conclusion, Tan shows her opinions and personal experiences on persuading others to believe that language has power. It seems like she demonstrates the power of language in her writing. She uses her story about her mother to expose a problem that  really affected her mother's life. Then, she uses satire that explores the reason why English from books and from school is not suitable to use at home with her mother. Then, she explains that the different ways of her speaking "Englishes" are not always important. The goal of using any type of English is to make sense and express our feelings and share our experiences. This is the power of language that appears in many situations. Using of pathos, Tan shows her feelings about her mother and that she (Tan) loves her mother tongue, because it's the best way she can talk with her mother and clearly understand her mother. She claims that she feels closer to her family on using "broken" English. Moreover,  people who speak "broken" English don't lack thoughts and knowledge. It encourages us to speak more if we can speak broken English. Last, Tan uses dialogue between her and her mother in order to restate that once we try to gain attention from others, language is a good way to persuade.  The main point for this essay is telling us not to waste this power of language. For example, we write a letter to our friends to share our daily life. If you enjoy using this power of language everyday, you can also be a good writer like Tan.

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” 75 Readings Plus. 7th ed. Eds. Santi V. Buscemi and

Charlotte Smith. New York: McGraw Hill, 2004. 465-470. Print.

Linguistic Identity. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan Essay

The essay “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is a beautiful and elaborate piece meant to demonstrate the cultural challenges and divides existing for those with English as a second language. Tan comprehensively explores the role that language plays in perceptions of the world, relationships among people, and the perception of other nationalities and ethnicities in intercultural communication. The primary purpose of the essay was to define and analyze Tan’s struggles with linguistic identity and how she used her background and relationship with the English language to become a writer.

The first point that Tan makes is regarding the power of language and its use in daily life. For some, language is a natural part of daily life, while to others it is a tool used in the profession. Tan describes that she suddenly became aware of the “different Englishes” that she and most other people use. Many things depend on the context of the language use, for example, the topic of discussion, setting, and the people one interacts with. Language can sometimes take on intimate forms used with family and close individuals that may not make sense to others or be grammatically incorrect. Tan particularly refers to her mother, who is of Chinese background and educated. The woman can use somewhat “broken” syntax and unorthodox phraseology. While Tan understands her clearly, others may struggle with communication.

The essay’s argument leads to how limited English is based on perception. Therefore, realizing these barriers, one can consider the challenges that non-native speakers may face in a variety of aspects in life where perfect grammatical communication is necessary. The author specifically highlights how Asian-American students are often steered towards math and sciences and believed to be incapable of lingual-based fields due to accents, phraseology, and grammar errors. In turn, Tan reflects on her own life as to how she faced similar cultural stereotypes, but defied expectations and became a professional author.

This article was selected due to the personal connection it has to my life. Language continues to define perspectives and cultural outlook for me based on my own background. I appreciate that Tan speaks candidly but personably, emphasizing the intimate moments of learning a second language, especially with the family involved. My goal is to promote the idea that is highlighted in the essay as can be related to a significant number of people and should be made known in the educational settings where there are so many non-native English-speaking children. Their socialization is limited, and ambitions are destroyed due to the stereotypes and cultural perspectives on language mastery. My goal is to break down these barriers and demonstrate my passion for language that similar to Tan’s arguments should not discriminate based on cultural background.

Evidence may be beneficial in supporting my claim from an empirical standpoint. Such aspects as education patterns, student capabilities, psychological and sociological perspectives can be explained through theory and research. Therefore, while Tan’s essay is largely based on personal experience, I hope to build it into a solid argument. I am particularly interested in the evidence that Tan offers regarding Asian student being directed into STEM programs rather humanities due to their perceived poor knowledge of the language.

My revision strategy will be based on carefully rereading my writing and focusing on feedback from other readers. I will use a variety of tools such as research databases, a thesaurus for better use of synonyms, and proofreading to check for grammar. I will focus on revising the large aspects first such as the flow of my argument and supporting evidence, and gradually focusing on smaller details such as grammar and word choice. Receiving feedback from outside perspectives as crucial as it helps to identify weaknesses that one would not commonly notice yourself. I think my greatest weakness is word choice and sentence structure which limit my ability to express the complex ideas on the topic. Utilizing external feedback helps to preview how my writing would be understood by the general readership.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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IvyPanda . (2021) 'Linguistic Identity. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan'. 10 July.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Linguistic Identity. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan." July 10, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/linguistic-identity-mother-tongue-by-amy-tan/.

1. IvyPanda . "Linguistic Identity. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan." July 10, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/linguistic-identity-mother-tongue-by-amy-tan/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Linguistic Identity. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan." July 10, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/linguistic-identity-mother-tongue-by-amy-tan/.

• Denotation and Connotation on the Basis of Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue
• Mother Tongue by Amy Tan: What Does Your Language Say about Your Identity?
• Amy Tan’s and Personal English Learning Experience
• Andrew Jacobs’ Article “Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish”
• Gloria Anzaldua: How to Tame a Wild Tongue
• Difficulties Faced by ELL Students
• Improving Formality in Writing
• Linguistic Variables: Pragmatics and Discourse

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Amy Tan — Analysis of Rhetorical Strategies in Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

Analysis of Rhetorical Strategies in Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

• Categories: Amy Tan Rhetoric

About this sample

Words: 612 |

Published: Sep 1, 2020

Words: 612 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Tan, A. (1990). Mother tongue. In A. Tan (Ed.), The opposite of fate: Memories of a writing life (pp. 20-29). Penguin Books.
• Block, D. (2012). Mother tongue education and sustainable development: The West African experience. Routledge.
• Canagarajah, S. (2005). Mother tongue as a local knowledge. Routledge.
• Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Multilingual Matters.
• Kachru, B. B. (1986). The alchemy of English: The spread, functions, and models of non-native Englishes. University of Illinois Press.
• Martin-Jones, M., & Saxena, M. (2009). Multilingualism, second language learning, and gender. Multilingual Matters.
• Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and transcultural flows. Routledge.
• Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press.
• Romaine, S. (1995). Bilingualism. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & Cummins, J. (Eds.). (1988). Minority education: From shame to struggle. Multilingual Matters.

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