Evaluating Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue" and Perspectives on Language

In the essay “Mother Tongue” published in the American literacy journal, Amy Tan goes on to emphasize the struggles of identity, and expectations of the American and Asian society, through her two worlds of language. She demonstrates her point through her mother's perspectives, as well as through her own life experiences while growing up. Overall, I believe her point to be valid and clear through her examples that will be analyzed in this essay. To begin with, Tan's two universes experience the ill effects of a language conflict, which hinders her mindfulness of identity. Her first world, which revolves around her Chinese speaking mother, consists of speaking “impeccable broken English”, to be able to better communicate with each other. The English spoken is the definition of simple and easy. Throughout this world, Tan makes a point of being uncomfortable of the English flowing through her mother's teeth to the point where she believes it “almost had an effect on limiting her possibilities”. From stories of her visiting the department stores, or the stockbroker, to even simply talking to her daughter’s friends, Tan’s mother’s English is and will always be broken to others. However to Tan herself, her “mother's english becomes perfectly clear and natural” which helps her “make sense of the word”, thus encouraging her discovery for identifying primary language. She discovers that her “mother tongue” will consistently have an alternate social methodology in this private world. Whereas on the other hand of the coin, in the professional and formal world, Tan is an ideal English scholar. With being able to speak grammatically and formally well, Tan’s identity of perfect english is clearer than her world that revolves around “limited English”. Consequently, the move between these two universes with various dialects, features the effects on Tan's self character of language.

In addition, Tan expresses being judged by society of both American and Asian populations, puts an equivalent measure of weight on her acknowledgment of her language. Being an English major with a background of Chinese descent, the expectations of the Americans, and stereotypical views of the Asians prey on her life like a pack of lions hunting for food. Even in highschool, her teachers wanted her to pursue math or sciences rather than anything else, further showing what was expected of her was something entirely different from her own expectations. This massive stereotype of Asians being more associated with math and science, rather than anything of the English realm, plays a major role in how identities become diminished throughout life of any cultured individual who’s first language is not english. She also brings forth the fact that English tests required a greater amount of an assessment of one's own perspective, while math is simple and exact with just one right answer. Nevertheless, Tan did not let this stop her while growing up, and pursued her major in English, even if her worst skill, being writing, was a large part of the career.

Additionally, even in her mother's regular day to day existence, the heaviness of judgment is high, and now and again individuals because of her English not being the perfect language expected in the public eye, disregarded her or took what she communicated as a joke. Lastly, because of her native language, it is obviously appeared, straightforwardly just as by implication that ethnicity mists on society’s judgement of Tan and her mother.

All in all, the realization that identity and harsh judgment of society is affected by language, is immense. Also Tan proves that having two separate worlds with dialects that clash, does not mean the individual is also split into two, rather they learn to slowly accept, love, and embrace their struggles with identity.