Theme Of Mother Tongue

Words: 684
Pages: 3

There are a variety of many different languages that our world uses today; language and communication are very important in our society. When people come to America from other countries, they form their own kind of English. People identify that type of English as either broken or fractured English. In the short story, “Mother Tongue” written by Amy Tan describes that these types of people are stereotyped and are judged by the way they speak. Tan explains that her mother speaks a different type of English, and that she receives judgement and mistreatment by this. Additionally, Tan expresses that she speaks differently to her mother than to other people. The central theme of this short story is that society is judgemental and stereotypes people with broken English as not capable of succeeding. In this short story, The author discusses her love for writing and literature. Tan explains how she loves language and how she realized that she speaks different Englishes while she was performing a speech on …show more content…
The story identifies this topic because our society is judgemental and stereotypes people with broken English as not being able to succeed. Tan states, “the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (180). This demonstrates how poorly our society treats people with broken English. Tan was passionate about writing and she wanted to show that Chinese people could also write. The author states, “I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts” (182). It has been shown that characterizing someone as Chinese or speaking broken cannot define their intellectual