Rhetorical Analysis
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In my rhetorical analysis assignment, I wrote about Amy Tan’s, Mother Tongue and in this phase I have learned a lot. I have gained meaningful insights and throughout this paper many terms have impacted my learning and writing practices. This assignment has helped me achieve some course learning out comes as well.
Some meaningful insights I’ve gained in this phase was analyzing and breaking down rhetorical situations. I was able to identify and ethos, pathos and logos in the passage. This assignment really challenged me because I have never had to do identify rhetorical strategies in a passage before. There were also terms that have impacted my writing practice like writing for an audience and proving rhetorical situations with evidence. For every piece of evidence, I explained how it proved pathos, ethos or logos and how it was used to get a point across to a specific audience.
This phase’s assignment has helped me achieve some course learning outcomes. For example, “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations” was one of them because I needed to do that to find evidence to support my claim. Furthermore, I was also able to “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations” as well when looking for evidence to support my claim. Lastly, “Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” was also a course learning outcome. I had great feedback from my peers during zoom meetings and they informed me on what my paper was lacking for it to best it could be.
Rhetorical Analysis
Amy Tan is an Asian American who wrote Mother Tongue, the personal essay was published in 1990 by The Threepenny Review. In the personal essay Amy Tan includes her personal experiences growing up with her mother struggling with a language barrier and how that made her feel and how it influenced her thoughts. She argues that people are judged by the way they speak these languages and how other Asian Americans can be affected. To support her claim Amy Tan uses pathos, logos and ethos to persuade her Asian American audience. In this essay I will analyze how Amy Tan uses rhetorical strategies to show that people are judged by their language barrier and Asian Americans are affected by the stereotypes that surround their community
In the personal essay Mother Tongue, Amy Tan uses pathos when she tells her personal experiences and thoughts. Pathos is the used by the author to advocate emotion in their writing. For example, in the essay it states, “I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say.”(Tan, Page 1) With this line, the reader can see how Amy Tan felt embarrassed by her mother’s limited English and how she would judge her mother’s “limited” English. This line resonates with the audience because many could relate to how she felt and the struggle her mother went through because she was not being noticed or taking into consideration because of her language barrier. The line also pulls the Asian American audience’s emotions in because one can also remember and relate to a time that they have been embarrassed by their parent’s way of speaking English and know exactly how Amy Tan felt.
Another feature from the text worth pointing out is how Amy Tan uses logos in her personal essay Mother Tongue by mentioning a survey. Logos is facts used to support an argument. In Mother Tongue it states, “But I have noticed in surveys — in fact, just last week — that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English. And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as “broken” or “limited.”(Tan, Page 3) This line shows the reader that statistically Asian American students tend to perform better in math tests compared to English tests. Amy Tan uses this survey to support her argument that other Asian Americans could also be influenced by others to lean towards math courses rather than English courses, like she has once been when she was younger. The audience can relate to the quote because there has always been this stereotype that Asians are better at math and that is their strongest subject. Restating points made earlier, with using this survey Amy Tan connects it to how it affected her growing up, that the audience could also relate to.
Lastly, we also see ethos in Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue. Ethos is how credible, reliable and ethically appealing the author is. In Mother Tongue it states, “I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others.”(Tan, Page 1) Although the author states they are not a scholar of English, the reader can see that they are in fact still a credible and reliable source. Amy Tan includes many of her experiences showing her background and how it was for her growing up. If we also look into the author’s background, we can see that Amy Tan doubled majored in English making her a very credible source. The author includes firsthand experiences, proper grammar in her writing and is knowledgeable.
As we can see Amy Tan uses pathos, logos and ethos in her personal essay, Mother Tongue to prove her argument that people are judged by their language barrier and Asian Americans are affected by the stereotypes that surround their community. Amy Tan uses these rhetorical strategies to evoked emotions within the reader, supported it with facts and prove she is a credible source to persuade her audience. Many Asian Americans can relate to the struggle Amy Tan and her mother went through; From not being noticed because of their language barrier to being told to focus more on math rather than English because of stereotypes. Pathos in Mother Tongue allowed the audience to feel what the writer did at the time and let the audience feel this emotional connection to the personal essay. Logos in the essay also gave the audience a connection to the text that supported Amy Tan’s argument because the Asian American community is constantly associated with being better at math than English. Lastly, ethos supported the author’s claim by showing she was a credible and reliable source by her education and firsthand experiences growing up. Asian Americans can read Mother Tongue and see that they are not alone, and others have had the same struggle they had.
Work Cited
Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue. The Threepenny Review, 1990. Web.
WLLN
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In my Language and Literacy Narrative Project my audience was towards people who grew up learning two languages and the struggle with balancing both. My project could also be towards first generation children learning a new language not spoken at all at home. I used ethos to appeal to my audience in using my experience and going into details to make it as visual as possible, that is also the most meaningful insight I learned in this phase one. I was so used to writing dull sentences that get straight to the point. With this paper I got to break down sentences and challenge myself to make them more descriptive and visual. The concept of writing for an audience most impacted my writing practices. When I got to my conclusion paragraph, thinking about who my audience might be, really helped brings my thoughts in and relate them to others. Also writing for an audience gave me a purpose and kept me focused to get my point across.
This assignment helped me develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing”. During our in-class workshops I got great feedback from my peers that helped me better my writing and even gave me ideas to expand on my work. We revised our papers, I took their advice and even gave them some too. With their advice I got to fix my paper and I got a different perspective to ways I could develop it in a way I could see myself. It was difficult at first for me to give them feedback because I did not want to offend anyone or make them feel like their work wasn’t good, but everyone was so understanding.
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My family like many others in America immigrated from another country, meaning my parents’ first language is not English. Growing up my first language was Spanish and the most exposure to English I got in my toddler years was through Dora the Explorer. I assume since I did not know how to speak English I just was not interested in the shows. Yet funny enough I understood some of it, I just did not care to put much mind into speaking it. My toddler self was more interested in playing with my toys, having snacks, and taking naps and had the show playing as background music. Until one day, my cousin had come back from school and I was in another room, but I could hear everything she was saying. She sounded beyond excited and me being nosey, I tippy toed to the kitchen trying not to be noticed but the hard wood cracks were blowing my cover. I peeped into the kitchen to see what she was talking about. Apparently, that day her teacher was going over colors and she was telling my mom about it. I overheard some of the colors she mentioned but the one that stuck out to me was orange. I tipped toed back over to my room and stood in front of the mirror that was covered in fingerprints and worn off stickers mouthing what I heard. I could not get it right the first few times. I tried breaking up the word but the most I could get out was “o-o-or”. I was there standing in front of my mirror hands pressed against it making funny faces trying to figure it out. After a few tries I finally whispered “orange” as if it were a secret and ran into the kitchen to tell my mom…..
Soon after that I was starting kindergarten and my next challenge was to learn how to write in English. My mom would buy me the tracing books with the worm on the bottom line, a car in the middle-dashed line and an airplane on top. She would make me practice for at least an hour every day; I know this because she would sit me right next to her while she watched her TV soaps. I found this to be completely unfair and tedious, but I was not to mess with my mom when it came to her Latin shows. I would sit on the carpet floor rewriting my name, letters, and words over and over again with a thick yellow number two pencil that would leave a sore red bump on my ring finger. I did not see the point in why she would make me practice for so long when all I wanted to do was anything but that. I struggled to write and get a hold of the pencil, it seemed three times bigger than my tiny five-year-old hand. My favorite word to write was dog, it was so simple, and it was one of the first words I learned to write. I would constantly get praised by my teacher with stickers and compliments for my handwriting and it motivated me to keep wanting to do better, soon I found it easy to write and enjoyed learning new words.
These were very important moments for me growing up. My first word in English is the only memory I can remember vividly, and it reminds how I first started learning English and how I struggled with it at first. With my writing having my mom to make me practice and the constant praise helped me want to keep on writing and not find it to be so tedious like I did before. These were the building blocks that lead me to where I am today. It was very helpful knowing English and Spanish, for me and my family. I was able to translate papers and translate in person or ask questions that my family members couldn’t because of the language barrier. I was able to help teach my mom a bit of English too, so she could express herself when I am not around to help her. I get to enjoy more music, movies and books from both languages.
However, with knowing two languages I was starting to mix the together causing me to speak Spanglish. Speaking improper Spanish made me very self-conscious, even till this day I catch myself and do my best to correct it. At first, I made a lot of grammatical mistakes in Spanish since I would mostly speak English with the people around me. I would say things like “No sabo” instead of “No se” and my mom’s friends would point it out, making me insecure to speak in Spanish. In middle school I realized I wasn’t the only one having this issue. Many of my Spanish speaking friends were also making the same mistakes as me and I found comfort in that. My story is like many to those whose parents also immigrated to this country trying to balance out two languages.
