Cover letter

This essay examines Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, focusing on the discrimination and critique she had to face because of speaking “broken” English. This is written in a rhetorically designed order to my intended audience which is my instructor/classmate. I focused on using the appeal of logos, like pathos and logos. I used pathos to express the feelings that Amy Tan and her mother felt when she had to experience her mother being discriminated against and not being heard when speaking up for herself. I also used logos in my essay by using the connections Amy Tan said in her personal essay about growing up with an immigrant mother and having first-hand experience. I focused on these specific rhetorical strategies because, throughout her personal essay, Tan used many examples from her life that included emotional feelings. My reason for writing this was to look into why the author used some of the rhetorical concepts in a specific order.

It was a bit tough starting this essay, but only because I had to keep reading Tan’s personal essay to figure out what rhetorical strategies she utilized. One of the most meaningful insights that I’ve gained in this phase is analyzing the text deeper than just reading it. I learned how to research the author’s background and life history to know more about the challenges and accomplishments they faced. The outcome that impacted my learning and writing practices is the evidence because when appealing to the use of logos I had to find great examples that can relate to logos. Another outcome is context; exigence because it helps me examine specific aspects of the story.

This phase’s assignment has helped me achieve various goals. It has helped me achieve “Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.” While reading and examining Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, I had to write a summary of her personal essay. I never really done that before when writing an essay so starting off with a summary helped me do more factual research on the author. It also helped me analyze a variety of genres and rhetorical situations because, in Mother tongue, she used examples from her life which made me realize that it was a personal essay.

 

                                                Racial prejudice in Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

Amy Tan is a well-known Asian-American author who writes about her life as she grew up being bilingual and knows how it feels to be discriminated against. Tan’s mother was recognized for speaking “broken English” as an immigrant. Because she is the daughter of immigrants who fled China’s Cultural Revolution in the late 1940s, Amy Tan has firsthand experience with how people perceive her because of how she speaks. Mother Tongue was originally published in California, where most Asian immigrants arrived following a Chinese revolution. It was first published in 1990 in the publication “The Threepenny Review,” and most people in California may connect to Tan.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how people endure persistent prejudice as a result of how they talk. People who criticize Tan’s mother are the intended audience in her personal essay. Tan recounts in one of her lines that her mother could not receive the assistance she required because she didn’t speak decent English and the people around her couldn’t understand what she was saying. According to this context, Tan wanted to alert readers that although her mother doesn’t speak standard English, it didn’t require correcting. Instead, it remains an understandable language. I will be analyzing the uses of logos and personal experiences that Tan provides throughout her essay. 

Tan appeals to pathos by expressing the emotions that went on in certain situations to her audience. In this situation, the author talks about her mother’s tumor and how the doctors didn’t apologize to her when they lost her CAT scan. They did this after they heard Tan’s mom speaking in English and seemed to not care about giving her the help. The doctors didn’t feel any sympathy for Amy Tan’s mother knowing that she wanted to know her exact diagnosis. They simply told her they weren’t going to give her any information and had to wait until she made another appointment. She was treated unfairly until her daughter came to solve the problem since her daughter didn’t speak broken English. Tan is describing this specific moment because she wants to show readers the disrespect her mother had to go through. This is important because not only did Tan have to fight her mother’s own battles, but her mother’s words basically didn’t mean anything when she tried to speak up for herself. 

Throughout the story, Tan adds personal experiences and uses the first person. Tan talks about her mother’s broken English and how it affected her growing up. She starts off by explaining in paragraph 8 that her English limited her perception of how people viewed her because she wouldn’t get treated like she should. Tan then separates her story by giving examples of how her mother was discriminated against in certain situations because of her English and how Tan also felt like it affected her as well. Tan wasn’t the greatest in English class and that’s why she felt as if her mother played a role in why she wasn’t good at that. Tan justifies, “And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English is spoken in the home… And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math …” (3).  Tan feels as if she’s being discriminated against due to the knowledge she gets because teachers don’t want to put in the work and deal with kids who don’t speak proper English.

Tan appeals to logos by describing the different types of English Tan uses when talking to her mother and her own English. When she is not around her mother, she speaks a different English that her mother is not used to. According to paragraph 3, Tan declares, “My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her.” Tan speaks plain English in private, but when she is in the public eye, she switches to a more official and acceptable style. Tan code-switches since she and her mother aren’t obligated to speak “good” English in private and won’t be criticized. However, in public, her mother relies on her for translations that she is unable to solve for herself due to her poor command of the English language. In her essay, Tan uses statistics to talk about the number of Chinese students that go into engineering. She is intrigued by the reason behind this because in surveys she has realized that Asian American students do better in math and science so they keep writing away from them due to the broken English they speak. This is significant because, since some Asian American kids do not speak good English, teachers focus on math and science rather than teaching them how to speak “properly.”

Those who grow up with immigrant families tend to feel humiliated around them because of their “limited” English.  Tan reflects back to her personal experience to justify how she felt due to her mother’s English being spoken in public. “I know this for a fact because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say, that is because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect”(2). Whatever Tan’s mom has to say when speaking English, basically has zero meaning because Tan clarifies that her mother’s thoughts were imperfect. With Tan adding a personal example of how she felt, many can relate to that since there are a lot of people in society that deal with the discrimination of not speaking the same way as others. 

Altogether, Tan employs the appeal of logos to draw the reader’s attention to her difficulties in speaking English. She reflects upon her own experience as an Asian-American using anecdotes, ethos, logos, and pathos as rhetorical strategies. Tan is trying to let her audience know that despite the differences in the English language, it is still a way to interact with one another. Even though people who speak broken English have fewer opportunities than those who speak good English, they should not be treated any differently, and all should be equally represented.

Works cited

Tan, Amy. Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue – University of Washington. https://english.washington.edu/sites/english/files/documents/ewp/teaching_resources/amy_tan_s_mother_tongue.pdf.