Critical Analysis of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”

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Critical Analysis of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
Introduction
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is an article written in a form of an Essay Gloria Anzaldua describing how people experience challenges when others try to diminish their identity with reference to how they speak or communicate. Gloria Anzaldua is a Chicano or Spanish who lives in the South-West of the United State who has been raised up with knowledge for both English and Spanish. In her essay on “how to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Anzaldua tries to present the undesirable outlook of the society and the community’s attitude toward the other people from a different ethnic group and to be specific the Chicano people in United State express themselves in terms of their language. Anzaldua’s argues that society is always biased, expressing a high level of discrimination with reference to language and the way people speaks. From the essay, the United State is mainly experiencing a major challenge in recognizing and appreciating people especially the foreigners on the way they communicate as discussed herein.
Anzaldua begins her argument with the presentation of her conversation with a dentist, who seems to complain about Anzaldua’s accent. The idea of “taming the tongue is developed in a comparison structure with the way Anzaldua speaks and her accent, which makes her feel different from other people. According to Anzaldua, the way of speaking can be associated with her identity and origin and therefore little can be done to control the situation. She, therefore, ends up regarding accent as among the way to identify people with their origin, culture, and ethnic group. She could only view the Chicano speaking accent as terrible which mainly caused her a lot of problems especially when communicating with other people from the different ethnic group.
The success of Anzaldua’s work is clearly presented with her ability to speak up her mind without mainly communication to anyone. “Who is to say that robbing a people its language is less violent than war” (Anzaldua). This statement expresses the bitterness of being identified with the way a person speaks or even from the origin. The brutality and violence toward personal expression through communication are clearly presented by giving real life-experience examples of her encounters while struggling to defend her identity. She gave an example of confrontation she encountered from her teacher while trying to correct the teacher on the pronunciation of her name. The teacher responded “If you want to be American, speak ‘American’. If you don’t like to go back to Mexico where you belong”. The statement of the United State constitution’s amendment on violation of human rights through the attack of one’s form of expression with the intent to censor is a strong appealing of the American society to respect others with their identity.
Anzaldua continues to argue that the foreigners in the United State are even afraid of speaking not only their language but also the native English as the natives will criticize and even seclude them due to the developing accent. She provides so...