In the article Mother Tongue, Amy Tan, a daughter of Chinese immigrants brought up in America, describes the importance of the mother tongue in her life. The definition of “mother tongue” relates to the language of the country of her origin, as well as the tongue her mother speaks. The latter is a mixture of Chinese of her mother’s thoughts and English of her expression of them. The author argues that such a blend of two languages used in the family where she grew up, shaped the way she perceived the realities of life, expressed those realities, and made sense of the world.
To give evidence of it, Tan provides three different aspects of the influence of the language of her mother on her. Throughout the paper, this impact seems to be negative, which is proved by the two examples, such as her wrong perception of her mother’s thought ability, and prevention of success at school. However, in the end, Tan comes to the third aspect, stating that, ultimately, she could make these limitations beneficial to her. In this essay, it will be demonstrated that such a turn from the negative points to the positive makes the paper persuasive, and the whole argument complete.
The first point discovered in the article is the author’s perception of her mother, along with the observed public opinion about her. As Tan writes, in her view, mother’s imperfect English “reflected the quality of what she had to say,” and “her thoughts were imperfect” as well as their expression (p. 79). Moreover, the author finds proof of her view as she observes the impact of “broken” English on her mother’s public life, diminishing the account given to her, and the quality of service she is provided with. Though Tan describes her mother’s experience, it is implied that the author also could be in the same situation, had she been at the same level of language proficiency as her mother is.
The second negative aspect of the influence of the “limited” English of her mother is her inability to be successful in English class at school. As the author notices, while “math is precise,” language is always “a matter of opinion and personal experience” (Tan, p. 80). Thus, having at the background of the consciousness her mother’s ways of expression, she could not provide the right answers as they after were appearing in her mind as “the most bland combinations of thoughts” (Tan, p. 80). Besides, the language she is used to has influenced not only her language skills but also her perception of life, more associative than logical.
At last, the author comes to the point where she decided to choose English as the primary occupation. Despite the challenges and public perception of her English, she turned to creative writing as her profession. That was the time she realized “how much Chinese she was,” and started to observe “all the Englishes” she grew up with to improve her writing (Tan, p. 77). As she describes, all she was writing started to be addressed in her mind to the particular reader, who was no one else than her mother. She considered different variants of English: the one she used to speak to her mother, and her mother spoke to her; her translation of mother’s Chinese, and her mother’s translation. However, the most important was that she tried to discover the mother’s “internal language,” having understood that her initial assumption of the equality of thought and expression was wrong. It seems Tan was successful in it, having heard her mother, with her limited skills, saying that her quite complicated book is easy to read.
In conclusion, it might be argued that Tan is convincing in her argumentation and demonstrating different sides of the mother tongue’s influence on her life. Three aspects that she uses as evidence for the argument are considerable and typical, and the right succession of them makes the paper truly persuasive. The article, thus, demonstrates success in overcoming the challenges of “mother tongue” and turning them into benefits, providing an inspiring example for the readers.
Work Cited
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” Fields of Reading: Motives for Writing, edited by David Hamilton, et al., St. Martin’s Press, 2001, pp. 77-82.