Cover Page  

    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.