Preview

Anzaldua's Essay 'How To Tame A Wild Tongue'

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
822 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Anzaldua's Essay 'How To Tame A Wild Tongue'
Essay How to Tame a Wild Tongue
In Gloria Anzaldua’s article, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” she demonstrates her experiences of overcoming ethnic identity. From personal exposure, Anzaldua describes her observation of linguistic terrorism throughout her life. The article begins in a school setting where the author reveals an unacceptable atmosphere for being caught speaking Spanish. Communicating meant speaking American, and avoiding any Mexican accents. Violation of the First Amendment is expressed through the author feeling attacked for expressing her roots. Anzaldua’s emphasizes how people who have experienced alienation should not be ashamed of their native tongues.
Most of what Anzaldua feels is based on her personal background and experiences. She was born in South Texas, and dealt with issues of racism, sexism, and linguistic prejudice at an early age growing up in Texas. In her work she addresses these issues through her arguments, and actual events in her life. Specifically in this essay she shows how differences in her culture are all tied to her Tejana identity.
Some of the languages that are associated with Chicano Spanish are, Tex-Mex, Standard Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish dialect, and Pachuco to name a few. As for Anzaldua her preferences of which she uses are based on certain situations. With family and friends she uses her
…show more content…
Going on to say well-bred girls don’t answer back, using her influenced ways as a child. The writer goes into detail of humanity, not having a specific language of either English or Spanish, and being left to build their own language. From Anzaldua’s point of view, people with English as a second language struggle to connect their identity to a distinguished dialect. Chicano Spanish rooted from a need of identification and to interact with like relations. Certain words are made up of slang and are a secret language of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    udwig Wittgenstein once said in his book Logico Tractatus Philosophicus ,“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” This quotation means language has no limit, it’s something that can be translated into a wide variety. Both Amy Tan in the essay, “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez in the essay, “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” write about their struggle with their identities not only because of their race, but also the language there families speak. Amy Tan and Richard Rodriguez both struggled with there families language conflicting with the need to speak the language of society. While children they share similarities with their struggles, and they differ in their perception of the importance of maintaining their families…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story “How To Tame A Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldua is a young Chicano girl who felt as though the language she spoke was needed to identify…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This seminar was about the Rehabilitating the "Wild Tongue" Philosophy at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. The speaker, Francisco Guajardo, divided his presentation into four major parts. Francisco starts off by giving a background information of his life. In the first few minutes of the presentation, I learned Francisco belonged to an immigrant family. His family migrated to the United States, in search for a better life. Francisco grew up in the city of Elsa, Texas beside his two brothers. Francisco first language was Spanish, but he later was introduced to the English language. While Francisco attended his first year of elementary school, his classroom became a test trial for bilingual instruction. Francisco states that rushing a Spanish speaking child into an English classroom will affect their language development.…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As a son of Mexican American immigrants, Richard Rodriguez recounts the story of his childhood and his struggle to assimilate into American culture. In Aria: A memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, Rodriguez always felt like an outcast whenever he set foot outside of his house. As a young child, he exclusively spoke Spanish to members of his household and tried his best to learn and speak English in the real world. He “regarded Spanish as a private language. It was a ghetto language that deepened and strengthened [his] feeling of public separateness” (Rodriguez 505) because it identified him as a member of his family and it served as a link to his own Mexican heritage. By speaking Spanish, he communicates a certain level of intimacy with all of his relatives. However, as his narrative progresses, he finds himself slowly breaking away from that intimacy as he begins to speak more English, both by force and social pressure. Teachers scolded him if he spoke anything but English and his peers Americanized his name into Richard (rather than calling him Ricardo.) He began to feel like a traitor by mastering this “public language” when his relatives began treating him differently. His bilingual childhood was an enormous adversity that Rodriguez had to overcome.…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gloria Anzaldua's title "How to Tame a Wild Tongue", depending on which angle it is looked at, could be seen as a rhetoric question in the sense that the "tongue" and or whatever it stands to signify cannot be tamed. In this case it metaphorically represents her native language-Spanish or Chicano Spanish-to be precise. On the other hand, the title could be taken as a statement of ridicule to show the futility or near futility of trying to force a change of language or pattern of speech on an immigrant or colonized people. She loved speaking Spanish and never made any pretenses towards changing her speech pattern as she "remembers being sent to the corner of the classroom "for talking back" to the Anglo teacher when…

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anzaldua is happy with her mixed identity, but she is unable to choose which is more important which is something she should not have to do as we progress farther and father away from the binaries that hold society back. She explores this thought with…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What leaves the deepest impression on me is the sentence “ Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out”, this sentence appears for several times in this article, I think this sentence also can summarize the whole article in a metaphor way, this sentence shows her attitude, her brave to against what she don’t want. “ If you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language.”, from this sentence, we can know she thinks her language is really important for her, and then she said my favourite words, “ I am my language.”, she impress herself as her language because in her mind, her language is her culture and soul, is her identity, she combines her body and the language together into a perfect her, language is her calling card. She claims to the whole world that she is disgruntled that she need to forget and change her language, she is calling for real freedom and fair. How brave she…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    American values are frequently forced upon students or workers. There are few times, where people look down on people who do not accept the American Way of Life. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Anzaldúa wrote, “So if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language” (Anzaldúa 445). Linguistic identity can be difficult for a bilingual person, being somewhere in-between two different culture is confusing and sometimes uncomfortable. A person can’t simply identify with one or the other because each culture has impacted an individual’s life. Being a bilingual also creates boundaries and limitations because the feeling of being disconnected from the language and culture a person is…

    • 833 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gloria Anzaldua, who was an activist and writer that grew up in Texas and endured several forms of oppression, covers several topics in her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” including her feelings on the social and cultural difficulties that Mexican immigrants face when being raised in the United States. Among one of the things Anzaldua describes Mexican immigrants must endure is the judgment from other Mexicans for the way they speak Spanish. Anzaldua describes the situation as:…

    • 1932 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anzaldúa expresses the power of language when she talks about linguistic terrorism. She mentions that, “Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self” (Austin 210). Since she was raised speaking Chicano Spanish, this language is a part of who she is. She also states, “If you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language… I am my language” (Austin 211). The power of one language washing another is what truly hurts people. People should not be attacked because of the native language they speak, because by doing so, you are attacking who they are as a person. All in all, Anzaldúa believes the power of language should be used to bring people together.…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Garcia, Jessica & Nieves-Ferris, Kristin. (2001). Hablas Spanish?: The Linguistic Culture of Bronx Puerto Ricans. Retrieved from http://www.nyu.edu/classes/blake.map2001/puertorico.html…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    When reading this passage, it is evident that Anzaldua feels strongly about her Hispanic background and doesn’t concur with the ideology of the university and their attempts to rid students of their accents. I also construe, through reading the passage, that even though many natives don’t approve of her Chicano way of speaking, she is pleased with her heritage and culture and doesn’t concern herself with others opinions.…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    If it’s her parents she would speak to them in a Spanish and respectful tone. If it’s her siblings she would talk in English and at time she would talk in Spanish. She would be more open and comfortable talking to her siblings compared to her parents. She would also talk in a “Code” with her sisters to exclude anyone that doesn’t know this code. Jennifer and her siblings made this code so that her parents wouldn’t know what they are talking about. The code that I use within the community would be a “Gaming” code. Only people that play a certain game would know this code and I use it with my friends all the time. For example me and my friends would be talking and if one of us does something wrong we would call someone a “Noob”. Jennifer also mentioned that when her parents disagreed with her going out somewhere or they felt that it was too late to go out, her parents would try to convince her out of it and maybe even trying to scare her to not going. For instance, my parents would say that “El CuCuy” was going to get me for watching tv late at night or just staying up past my bedtime. Anzaldua herself writes, “ Don’t go to the outhouse at night, Prieta, my mother would say. No se te vaya a meter algo por allá. A snake will crawl into your nalgas, make you pregnant……….”. Anzaldua’s mom is a clear representation that this type of language between the hispanic community existed in…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gloria Anzaldua in How to Tame a Wild Tongue and Amy Tan in Mother Tongue both share a similar message in their essays, they argue that every single culture faces different language obstacles when learning the english language. Both struggle to develop the correct form of english, the one considered acceptable by society. Both Tan and Anzaldua teach us about their ethnic backgrounds, in an effort to better help us learn of their struggles. Amy Tan, is of asian descent, and tells us how growing up with a mother who spoke “broken english” influenced the person she became and how she approached the world. Gloria Anzaldua, considered herself a Mexican American but mainly Chicana, and she tells us of her struggle to accept her roots and to find a place where she belonged. Ultimately, this also influenced who Anzaldua came to be. The…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My English Summary

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American writer. She describes the struggle and the achievements she had in the essay ‘My English’. She lived in the Dominican Republic with her family, who spoke only Spanish at home. She grew up learning Spanish by heart. It was her first language. She and her sister joined Carol Morgan School and became a bilingual family. She had to use English in school. As Spanish had its many tongues, she thought of English as another and harder version of Spanish. When they were kids her parents would use English to talk about things they didn’t want the kids to know. Julia used to watch her mothers Spanish facial expression to understand the “harder Spanish”. She used this same method in school to understand her teachers. She would try to transform the English she learned in school to Spanish by repeating it all day long.…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays