Analysis of Amy Tan’s Language Experiences Depicted in Mother Tongue

The Challenge of Language Barriers

The inability to communicate in fluent English is sometimes unfairly characterized as an incapacitation. When individuals can't express their thoughts in fluent English, those listening often fail to address them with the seriousness required. In some cases, it is seen as a form of disability, and the person is demeaned. Together with her mother, Amy Tan has been on the receiving end of such treatment. She notes with concern that “when I was growing up, my mother's 'limited' English limited my perception of her” (Tan, 1990). Amy has also adopted the mentality of belittling individuals whose English was broken. Like the public around her and her mother, she had made life more challenging for people who were unable to use fluent English. The extent of challenges facing immigrant families throughout history is one that extends to their race. For Tan and her mother, their fear was that they would be treated as outsiders, and no one would care to see beyond their Chinese origin. These emotions are also echoed in the work of Rudolf Gaudio, who lamented the severity of discrimination in "The Blackness of ‘Broken English’" (Gaudio, 2003). For English-speaking Americans, sprinkling pseudo-Spanish words such as "Exactamndo" is excused as a funnier way to say "exactly." Also, they would use African American English expressions such as "We Be Growing" and "Da Crib" and find an excuse for the same. However, when others use similar methods to communicate, English-speaking Americans do not tolerate them. Gaudio points out that this has been used to racialize “practices of linguistic appropriation.” Such is the rampancy of discriminating against people based on their accents that immigrant families find it difficult to communicate in the public space.

The Struggles of Immigrant Identities

For immigrant families, discriminatory practices have even forced them into unpopular tactics such as faking their identities. As a result of the embarrassment associated with speaking broken English, immigrants resort to creating fake identities to cover up for their supposed imperfections. Amy reckons that her mother had made her peace with her poor English. However, for her to be taken seriously, she had to ask Amy to pretend to be her so that communication between her and other English-speaking people would be taken seriously. Amy recalls calling people on the phone in place of her mother and doing what her mother would ordinarily do. When dealing with her mother’s stockbroker, for instance, she recalls having to “get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing, 'This is Mrs. Tan'” (Tan, 1990). Amy’s mother had to recreate a different personality under her daughter’s disguise to shield herself from the judgmental public. The English-speaking fraternity has sought to demean and degrade any person whose English is not fluent, pushing the latter into such tactics. English-speaking has become a contentious issue worldwide in an undesirable manner. Each group continues to judge the other based on their ability to speak English, yet English should only be a medium of communication and a cultural symbol rather than a measure of intelligence. In Ireland, the debate of who is better than the other based on their English-speaking ability has been a perennial matter among the Chomskyans and Whorfians. The two factions are always in argument on whose expression in English is the standard determination of what being Irish should entail. The said argument has often descended into “a verbal war” in a bid to determine “whether language determines thinking and culture, and as to whether English can be a suitable medium of expressing 'Irishness'” (O'Conner, 2015). From the above example, it is clear that the matter of speaking English has been blown out of proportion to include a reflection of a person’s authenticity of a particular group. The Irish scenario has now pitted two groups on opposing ends of this debate. Amy Tan’s narration expresses a more subtle version of discriminatory practices. However, it is from such subtle disagreements and stereotypes that considerable disagreements grow. People who do not use English as their first language also get looked down upon regardless of their achievements in other areas of life.

Discrimination in Education

Amy Tan was a witness to the highly discriminatory behavior that persists in the school system irrespective of her performances in other subjects. She is frank enough to admit that her grades in English were not as impressive as those she posted in others such as math and science. However, she would still manage to score Bs or B minuses, which were impressive given that she would be between the sixtieth or seventieth percentile. By any measure, Tan was a good performer in school, and that should have warranted her more respect. Since she was an immigrant, her grades in English were perceived as dismal, yet her effort would not be considered adequate enough to “override the opinion that my true abilities lay in math and science” (Tan, 1990). This argument demonstrates that for immigrants, English is used as the single metric of their intelligence, and all their other grades are discredited. This school of thought advances an unfair comparison and competition among English-speaking and immigrant learners. The efforts of immigrant persons in learning the English language are not only discredited in schools but in other public spaces as well. Tan lamented that the accent of immigrant persons significantly limited their confidence to speak in public. It would be expected that any effort towards speaking fluent English would therefore be appreciated by English-speaking people.

The Reality of Misunderstanding

However, that was not always the case. In fact, any attempts to speak English were often dismissed as their words were not comprehensible. Even after years of friendship, Tan noted that she had friends who did not necessarily understand her mother when she tried to speak in English. In seeking their responses, some of them said they only understood 80 or 90 percent of what she said, while others had considerably harsh standards and told her that “they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese” (Tan, 1990). This was a brutal assessment of Tan’s mother’s English as she had put a lot of effort into her communication skills. The persistent bias against non-native English speakers highlights the broader issues of linguistic discrimination and the need for greater understanding and empathy in our increasingly multicultural world.

References

• Gaudio, R. P. (2003). The Blackness of “Broken English”: Linguistic Appropriation and the Politics of Race. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 13(2), 173-184.
• O'Conner, J. (2015). Language and Identity in Ireland: Chomskyans vs. Whorfians. Irish Studies Review, 23(4), 456-472.
• Tan, A. (1990). Mother Tongue. The Threepenny Review.