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Amy Tan Mother Tongue Analysis

Decent Essays

Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue” and Leslie Marmon Silko’s essay, Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective”, share similarities and differences. In both pieces of writing they explain the challenges that language has had on their lives but distinct views of how society perceives language. What is the significance of language? Language is something that defines a person and what makes a person’s lifestyle so distinct. Language is something that is also oh so powerful, which is expressed in Tan’s essay and Silko’s essay. For example, in Tan’s essay, she reveals the upsetting emotion to which she feels because of how society perceives her mother based on her English language. As said in Tan’s essay, “It has always bothered me that I can think of …show more content…

The significance behind this quote is that because Tan’s mother’s English isn’t quite well understood to society she gets unfairly judged or mistreated because of it. Since people aren’t able to understand what the mother says most of the time they think that she has limited understanding of the English language when in fact she’s quite intelligent. But no one in society can tell that from the way that she speaks. From the perspective of Tan her mother’s English is perfect, referring it as her “mother tongue”, so vivid and full of imagery. On the other hand, in Silko’s essay, she expressed language also, but through the art of storytelling. Not only does language makes a person’s lifestyle so distinct from others, but language is a part of culture. Storytelling played a tremendous role in her Pueblo culture. Storytelling is what also created a cultural identity and brought them together as one because the stories that were told connected past and future generation. For example, the story told about

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