Yewei Li
RHET 110N
9.23.2014
Mother Tongue
Do you judge and categorize people by their spoken language? I think the answer would be we are all unsure. People with limited English will sometimes get into trouble. When people could speak a language fluently, the others may not understand them. Maybe, some people with warm-heart will try their best to help them, or maybe some people will ignore them. This is because the others are not familiar with their limited English, and are from a different culture and community. “Mother Tongue” was written by Amy Tan, a Chinese immigrant, who is a technical writer graduate from San Jose State University. She is fascinated by language, so she decided to write this essay about what her mother was facing in society with her poor English. In “Mother Tongue”, Tan used emotions appeal to audiences successfully, and her examples in the essay impressed me, since I have much in common with her, however, her credibility was not strong enough in the essay.
In this text, Tan firstly did not notice the language that she used to speak with her mother was different from the language she spoke in her speech, until she was giving a talk with a group of people. Also, there are pieces in the essay, which are some examples about her mother’s language always being misunderstood; so the problems are not usually fixed until Tan opens her month to talk. On the other hand, she insisted that the intelligence of people does not have a connection with their spoken language.
In this essay, Tan shows her and her mother’s anger and sympathy for her mother, because the stockbroker did not send her the check back, and Tan’s mother thought the stockbroker lost her money. Then Tan’s mother said to the stockbroker “What he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?” (Tan 624). This passage fully expressed the anger from Tan’s mother, and she shout out some words with broken sentence. And then, Tan was trying to calm her mother down, and she said to the stockbroker “I can’t tolerate any more excuses. If I don’t receive the check immediately, I am going to have to speak to your manager when I’m in New York next week” (Tan 624). This passage was the same meaning of what Tan’s mother said, but it was a perfect English sentence. Clearly, there is a big difference between what she said and what her mother said, especially different grammar. On the other hand, Tan was actually creating sympathy for her mother, because the stockbroker did not serve her mother at the first place, and forgot to send her the check. Maybe the stockbroker did not understand what Tan’s mother was trying to say, or the stockbroker was trying to ignore her because of her broken English. Then in the next paragraph, Tan used a similar example, which was using the similar events, which was Tan’s mother went to the hospital to get the result of CAT Scan, because Tan’s father passed away because of brain decease, but the hospital lost the result. Tan said “She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing”(Tan 624). After that when the hospital called Tan:” who spoke in perfect English-lo and behold-we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake”(Tan 625).Tan’s mother must be so sad, and she was worried about her result because her husband passed away because of Brain decease. but the hospital lost the result and did not take the responsibility. Everybody will get pissed off in this situation, because we would be so worried about the result, and the problem was not solved until Tan called the hospital with her perfect English.
Tan showed her limitations in the first paragraph by saying she is not a scholar of English or literature and in the second
