Mother Tongue and Newman Those Who Immigrate Essay

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Mother Tongue and Newman

Those who immigrate into the United States from other countries are encouraged to adapt to the culture of the majority population, namely white males of European descent. Language is the component of culture which is first targeted by those who try to force assimilation. When a person comes to the United States, they will feel compelled to learn English and be able to read and write in that language regardless of what language is their first. Those that do not assimilate to the American cultural perspective are made to feel like outsiders, as if they do not belong. In three articles, "Mother Tongue, "One Nation, Indivisible: Is it History?," and "Newman Student's Speech in Spanish Sparks Criticism" each deals with the issue of language as a means of cultural assimilation.

Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue" describes the two different types of English that she uses in her daily life. There is the more sophisticated English language that she uses in discussing her texts with students and with other literary colleagues. Then there is the broken, perhaps more simplified English that she uses when she is talking to her mother. Tan says that she made this realization only when the two types of English were forced to intersect. She was delivering a speech and her mother was sitting in the audience. It was only while she was giving this speech and using her more academic vocabulary that she became aware about the different ways that she communicates.

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The way in which she speaks is entirely dependent on the audience that is listening to her dialogue. When she is speaking to other highly educated people, she uses more professional vocabulary and in her familial setting, she is more relaxed with her dialogue and even picks up on some of the broken English cues of her immigrant mother's speech patterns. Tan expresses in the essay that she has come to see her mother's form of English as a special entity but that this was not always the case. In her adolescence, the mother would have Tan make phone calls and pretend to be the adult because her English was more comprehensible to those not familiar with her more unique dialect. She also asserts that the exposure to this different form of English had a correlative in her grades in English. This does make sense and is backed by some research that Tan has performed (Tan 1990,-page 79). Curious about the dynamic between her mother's English and that of the larger population, she found out that the children of immigrants traditionally do not do as well in English and literature courses as students whose parents were natural-born citizens. This is strictly a matter of vocabulary practice. When undiluted or "unbroken" English is the norm, then communication is not in any way hampered by its being a second language.

In the article "One Nation, Indivisible: Is it History?" The author William Booth talks about the….....

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