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  • Essay / A problem of discrimination in Amy Tan's mother tongue

    A fact would not be interesting for people who feel humiliated because of their accent when communicating in English. In Amy Tan's Mother Tongue, she argues that there is no specific way to speak English because it exists in multiple varieties. This position is evident given that the English spoken in immigrant and American households varies greatly in the extent to which their respective backgrounds affect the way they communicate. For immigrant families, communicating in public is difficult due to their “broken English.” They are therefore mistreated. In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan reveals the many challenges immigrant families face in the eyes of a discriminated public to express why it is no one's duty to judge others based on their communication skills. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayThe inability to communicate in fluent English is sometimes unfairly referred to as a disability. When people cannot express their thoughts in colloquial English, those who listen to them fail to approach them with the seriousness required. In some cases this is seen as a form of disability and the person is demeaned. Along with his mother, Tan was the victim of this type of treatment. She notes with concern that "when I was little, my mother's 'limited' English limited my perception of her." Amy also adopted the mentality of putting down people whose English was poor. Like the public around her and her mother, she had made life more difficult for people unable to speak English fluently. The magnitude of the challenges that immigrant families have faced throughout history has extended to their race. For Tan and her mother, their fear was that they would be treated like foreigners and that no one would care to see past their Chinese background. These emotions are also found in The Blackness of “Broken English” when Rudolf Gaudio laments the severity of discrimination. For English-speaking Americans, the use of pseudo-Spanish words such as Exactamndo is excused as a more fun way of saying exactly. Also, they would use African American English expressions such as "We Be Growing" and "Da Crib" and make an excuse for it. However, when others use the same method to communicate, English-speaking Americans do not tolerate them. In doing so, Gaudio highlights that this has been used to racialize “practices of linguistic appropriation.” Discrimination based on accent is such that immigrant families have difficulty communicating in public spaces. For immigrant families, discriminatory practices have even forced them to resort to unpopular tactics such as falsifying their identities. Due to the embarrassment associated with speaking broken English, immigrants must resort to other tactics of creating false identities in order to conceal their supposed imperfection. Amy believes her mother has made peace with her bad English. However, in order for her to be taken seriously, she had to ask Amy to impersonate her so that the communication between her and the other English speakers would be taken seriously. She remembers calling people on the phone in her mother's place and doing what her mother would usually do. For example, when dealing with her mother's stockbroker, she remembers having to "phone up and say in a teenage voice that wasn't very convincing: 'This is Ms Tan.' Amy's mother had to recreate a different personality under thedisguise of his daughter to protect himself from public judgment. The English speaking fraternity has sought to belittle and degrade anyone whose English is not fluent, causing the latter to resort to such tactics. English has become a bone of contention around the world, in an unwanted way. Each group continues to judge the other based on their ability to speak English, but English should only be a means of communication and a cultural symbol rather than a measure of intelligence. In Ireland, the debate over who is better than the other based on their ability to speak English is a recurring topic among Chomskyans and Whorfians. The two factions still argue over which expression in English is the standard determination of what being Irish should entail. This debate has often devolved into "a war of words" over "whether language determines thought and culture, and whether English can be an appropriate means of expressing 'Irishness'." From the example above, it is clear that the issue of speaking English has been exaggerated to include a reflection of the authenticity of a person belonging to a particular group. The Irish scenario now pits two opposing groups in this debate. Amy Tan's story expresses a more subtle version of discriminatory practices. However, it is from such subtle disagreements and stereotypes that considerable disagreements arise. People who do not use English as their native language are also looked down upon, regardless of their achievements in other areas of life. Amy Tan has witnessed the highly discriminatory behavior that persists in the school system, regardless of her performance in other subjects. She is candid enough to admit that her English grades were not as impressive as those she posted in other areas like math and science. However, she would still manage to get Bs or B minuses, which was impressive considering she would be somewhere between the sixtieth or seventieth percentile. By all accounts, Tan did well in school and that would have earned him more respect. As an immigrant, her English grades were seen as dismal, but her efforts would not be considered adequate enough to "override the view that my true abilities lay in math and science." This argument demonstrates that for immigrants, English is used as the sole measure of their intelligence and that all their other scores have been discredited. This school of thought promotes unfair comparison and competition between English-speaking and immigrant learners. Immigrants' efforts to learn the English language are discredited not only in schools but also in other public spaces. Tan lamented that immigrants' accents significantly limit their confidence in public speaking. It would seem that any effort to become fluent in English would therefore be appreciated by English speakers. However, this was not always the case. In fact, any attempt to speak English was rejected because the words were not understandable. Even after years of friendship, Tan noticed that she had friends who didn't necessarily understand each other when she tried to speak in English. In seeking their answers, some of them said they only understood 80 or 90 percent of what she was saying, others had very high standards and told her that "they don't understand anything about it." all this, as if she were speaking pure Chinese.” This was a brutal assessment of Tan's mother's English, as she had put a lot of effort into her., 35(3), 99-119.