English 101: Rhetorical Analysis Paper On Mother Tongue

Name: Yiyu lei
Professor: Ron Holland
Course: English 1101
Rhetorical Analysis Paper On Mother Tongue
Finding someone who is able to express themselves in a particular language extremely well is something that the writers with wide experience and expertise appreciate much. In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, the author uses her mother as an example to illustrate how communication takes place between different people. The people could be from different places of the world and of different age brackets. According to the author it is wise not to use very sophisticated English which will not be understood by a majority and it is easy to do so when the person understands the group of people that they are addressing. These appeals in emotions, credibility and a logical point of view it is evident that there is no Standard of speaking English.
First of all, Tan starts off by stipulating that she cannot give much more than personal experiences and opinions on the English language. She goes ahead expressing her variation in language use in her talks and family as different. She uses professional and personal experiences such as poor performance in English; her mother’s limited English and her boss’ discouragement on literary work. She argues that it’s language that has made her who she is and also limited her performance in early life (360-361). Thus, mother tongue (family talk) has a significant influence on one’s prowess of the English language. It limits a person’s expression of thoughts if the language used is ‘broken.'
At the beginning, the author uses the facts to persuade the audiences. The first impression that the writer portrays about herself is that of an individual who is truly conversant with the English language. Contrary to the expectations of many is that those who are very close to her speak English which she can classify as wrong if she was dealing with other professional but she doesn’t classify it as wrong. It would be expected that because she is a writer those who hail from her family are writers or even people are acutely aware of the English language. One thing that the writer does exceptionally well is that she understands that English is a language which her mother did not speak during her early years and therefore being perfect is not easy. In an English test different answers can be accepted so long as they are able to bring out the meaning. When the writer is in a meeting addressing audience the talk was related to writing. It was not the first time that she was giving the speech as she had previously given the same speech to many other groups and that why it was easy for her to give the same speech. In her speech she had used the same language of sentences like “the interception of memory by imagination.” However, things changed when she reali...