Language In Amy Tan's Mother Tongue

Language has an intricate plethora of interpretations, ranging from a language halfway around the world to a single comprehensive dialect or an accent that sounds like a loosened form of English. People use these form of languages every day, integrating themselves so deeply that it becomes the life altering metamorphoses that not only affects a generation but also a culture and family. As esteemed novelist and writer Amy Tan describes in her essay, Mother Tongue, it is “the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in shaping the language of the child” (181). Many people can relate to a verity such as family, always being the central influence on how the child will eventually articulate the spoken language. The same language that parents use to reprimand misbehavior is the same language they will use to mellifluously speak to the child. Think of language as the cartographer of all personalities, …show more content…
Like Amy Tan, her language of intimacy was not Chinese, although she is Chinese. It was English and that was not her first language. It was the way in which she changes the so called “proper” usage of it that makes it unique and it was the same way her mother spoke and raised her, with the same English she uses with her husband. Tan was able to make English into something else than what it already was. Language is all about personal interpretation and Tan altered it so that it would be like a code for personal familial usages. Within that, the cartographer has mad the road map to individualism, one of the most important provocations that language has to offer. Even as a writer, she chooses not to discard such a valuable type of language usage. She has learned to value this type of English for the soul sake of it being the teacher of her youth, therefore setting an example that language is not only native, communicative, and spoken but also