Language In The Woman Warrior

Throughout our lives we communicate to a vast array of people on a daily basis from teachers to friends to family. Each time we speak to these individuals there tends to be a different “slang” that is used with each yet at the same time still portraying the same message. In groups of different cultures they have a similar voice through language. Even though the languages they speak are different the meanings can be the same. Through this everyone has the ability to show love, anger, sadness, and the ability to teach right from wrong. Two authors from different ethnic backgrounds show how language affects them personally and the ones around them. Kingston, a Chinese author, writes about stories based on the things she heard from her mother and
Rodriguez is a Spanish author who writes about his first hand account of being a bilingual child in America and how it affects him and his family in “Aria”. In both Rodriguez’s essay and in Kingston’s novel the use of language and the meaning behind it is prevalent. Through the power of language in both of these pieces we see how it affects a family and the community that surrounds them. For Kingston it shapes her into becoming an adult and how it shapes her views while also affecting how she people should use language. At the same time both of these authors face challenges that all arise from the power of language. From the beginning of Kingston’s novel she makes notice of her mother’s talk stories. Based upon their language her mother tells her kids of these stories to teach value and
Being a native Spanish speaker, Rodriguez’s knows how there are multiple ways of speaking a language. Similar to how the Chinese have their language and talk stories. Rodriguez’s shares love through the power of language with his family. Since Rodriguez shares a certain language with his family at home he feels that, “It is not possible for a child-any-child-ever to use his family’s language in school. Not to understand this is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize the nature of intimate life-a family’s language”. To him he believed that at home he a specific language that he shared with his family and no one else would be able to understand it. At home he was able to share love with his family through their language. He was against using this type of language at school because you cannot teach this to other people as it is something that comes naturally. Also if this type of language was used it would take away from the intimate aspect it contained as it would no longer be secluded to just his family. Moreover the family rarely spoke any language that was not theirs. “By, contrast, English, rarely heard in the house, was the language I came to associate with gringos”. To him there is only one language that he knows. Because of this it also makes it hard to learn in school since he does not want to have is family