Amy Tan essay
Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue
Throughout the passage of “Mother Tongue,” the author Amy Tan uses strategies in a way to have the reader influenced by the point she is trying to prove. And in this case she is explaining the idea of language in the Asian-American community. She is speaking through multiple perspectives in her own life to show how society is not very understanding to people who are native speakers or can not speak as fluently, in a way that people view their English speaking in different ways and even have less respect for. Moreover, Tan is in this situation in which she is thinking and analyzing the different Englishes she tends to use throughout her life. As she was raised by her mother who as she explained would refer to her speaking as “broken’ or ‘fractured’ English” (Tan, 713). Meaning that she is trying to explain to her peers to a point where they understand how her mother speaks. In which appears to be the fact that they are stereotyping her, along with others who don’t speak different English to a point where it seems disrespectful. Tan feels the need to expand on this idea of disrespectfulness as she reaches her purpose in telling her mother’s stories about when she was not treated as she should be and it took Amy to actually come help her in order to get what she needed. It conveys the idea also that she is trying to tell English speakers as a whole to not give people like her mother more respect then she has because just because her English is not perfect doesn’t mean she is limited to things that fluent English speakers are. Tan continues to expand through the idea ethos, pathos, and logos as she is trying to get her point across strongly. For the concept of ethos, Tan uses at the beginning of her passage the idea of how she explains that she is not being biased or anything about language in general, but a mere fact of what she has experienced and knows through her previous involvement with people and her development in becoming a
Throughout the passage of “Mother Tongue,” the author Amy Tan uses strategies in a way to have the reader influenced by the point she is trying to prove. And in this case she is explaining the idea of language in the Asian-American community. She is speaking through multiple perspectives in her own life to show how society is not very understanding to people who are native speakers or can not speak as fluently, in a way that people view their English speaking in different ways and even have less respect for. Moreover, Tan is in this situation in which she is thinking and analyzing the different Englishes she tends to use throughout her life. As she was raised by her mother who as she explained would refer to her speaking as “broken’ or ‘fractured’ English” (Tan, 713). Meaning that she is trying to explain to her peers to a point where they understand how her mother speaks. In which appears to be the fact that they are stereotyping her, along with others who don’t speak different English to a point where it seems disrespectful. Tan feels the need to expand on this idea of disrespectfulness as she reaches her purpose in telling her mother’s stories about when she was not treated as she should be and it took Amy to actually come help her in order to get what she needed. It conveys the idea also that she is trying to tell English speakers as a whole to not give people like her mother more respect then she has because just because her English is not perfect doesn’t mean she is limited to things that fluent English speakers are. Tan continues to expand through the idea ethos, pathos, and logos as she is trying to get her point across strongly. For the concept of ethos, Tan uses at the beginning of her passage the idea of how she explains that she is not being biased or anything about language in general, but a mere fact of what she has experienced and knows through her previous involvement with people and her development in becoming a