Rhetorical Situation Worksheet:

Context & Exigence:

Tan believes she got her voice from her mother’s but also felt embarrassed, and ashamed, because of her mother’s English when she was young. But as Tan grow as a person, in literacy and literature she began to feel some sorrow and regret feeling negative about her mother’s English, and fully embrace her to the point where she sometimes sounds just like her mother tongue.

Author:

Amy Tan is an American author who received her B.A with a double major in English and linguistics also with an M.A. in Linguistics.

Text:

Mother Tongue was published in 1990 by a literary magazine called “The Threepenny Review.

Audience:

Amy Tan’s mother is the intended audience as well as Chinese people who live in America.\

Purpose:

The author is trying to convince others that she is a writer and not a scholar of English or literature. She gave an amazing story about her journey in her literature so that we can understand the struggle she faced for not having a good resource to learn English from her mother. But instead of putting the blame and being ashamed of her mother’s English, she accepts her at all costs.

Argument:

Tan believes that her mother’s English is not “broken”, she does not like that phrase.

Evidence:

“It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than broken as if it were damaged…(Tan 2). The whole idea of saying someone’s English is “broken” seems to break people like one person would assume you are not intelligent therefore you won’t be treated as an equal. People have a tendency to be judgmental but try to find respect in someone else English so that they don’t feel included in society.

Citation:

“Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers.” Study.com, homework.study.com/explanation/when-was-mother-tongue-by-amy-tan-published.html#:~:text=Mother%20Tongue%2C%20by%20Amy%20Tan,and%20based%20in%20Berkeley%2C%20California

Amy Tan Official Website.” Amy Tan, www.amytan.net/. 

Rhetorical Strategies:

The part where she states “I am not a scholar of English or literature.” Right off the bat, she tells us she can straight up give her personal opinions, which makes her reading so much easier to read and by that I mean she does not sound like a robot when I read, other times when I do read the authors sound alike.

1 Page response to Tan:

Feeling connected to Amy Tan fills up a void of comfort when it comes down to using the English language. The reason for this is simple, despite having different ethnic backgrounds, we have something in common which is the struggle of literature at a young age. For example, in elementary school, I was the best student in math class, like the teacher made me teach my classmates no joke but when it comes down to any, I mean any writing assignment, gosh I would fall behind my classmates. One of the lines Mother’s tongue states “Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas, for me at least, the answer on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience.”(Tan 3). This line touches me as far as even remembering my past experience. There is something about finding one answer, one solution but that all changes when it comes down to literature. You can express any given word yet I’m not creative enough to find an image. But as time progresses I grow more into respecting literature yet I’m not at the mastery level. If only I can find a way to reach that level I would be satisfied.