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"Mother Tongue" Summary Mother Tongue was first published as Under Western Eyes in The Threepenny Review in 1990. It is widely anthologized and studied by students of all ages. One reason it is so widely studied is because it concerns itself with the topic of code switching. Code switching is the term used to describe how people speak in different manners to different people. We see from the beginning of this essay that the English Tan uses when speaking to her mother is quite different from the English she uses in her writing, which is also different from the English she uses when she speaks with medical professionals. We all code switch in our language, and Tan shows us how her immigrant family experiences this phenomenon. Tan begins her essay by explaining a situation where she was giving a talk to a large group of people. This was a talk she had given multiple times before, but this time felt different to her because her mother was in the audience. It wasn’t that she was nervous that her mother was there; rather, she felt self-conscious because she became aware of the language she was using. She was not using the form of English she spoke with her mother. She was using a formal, more complex English. Tan then goes on to explain the English that her mother uses. Her mother is an intelligent woman. She understands complicated forms of English writing. However, her spoken English is not at the same level. In fact, people have difficulty understanding her English. She sometimes needs her daughter to be her voice when she wants to be taken seriously. Tan explains the difficulties she has labeling her mother’s English. She inspects words like "broken", "simple", and "fractured", but none of these seem to capture the essence of her mother’s English. Tan explains that she, like others, started to judge her mother’s interior life based on her English, thinking her thoughts were simple because her language was simple. Tan expresses how she thinks the language spoken in her home affected her academically and professionally. She claims to have struggled with analogies and other types of grammar questions on exams because English did not seem simple and precise to her. She saw color and vibrancy in the language, and the tests always seemed to want her to choose the most bland answers. She noticed, and has been asked, why there aren’t more Asian-American writers in America today. She does not have a clear answer, but she believes that it could be because, like her, these young people may have had difficulty with English at school, and because of that, they may have performed better on the math and science portions of exams than on the English. Perhaps they too were steered more towards those fields of study like she was. She credits her rebellious nature with her decision to go into writing instead of one of the fields she felt she was being corralled into. Tan ends her essay like she began it: by talking about her writing. She said that when she writes, she has to envision a reader. She has choose her as this ideal reader and she uses all the englishes she grew up with her mothers watered down English, the English she speaks to her mother translation of her own Chinese, and her perception of her mothers own internal dialogue. Mother Tongue: Further Analysis In this lesson, you learned about Amy Tan's essay, Mother Tongue. In this essay, she explores the role of English in her relationship with her mother. Use the following activities to explore this concept in more depth. Formality and Solidarity Registers What Amy Tan is describing when she talks about how she speaks to her mother versus how she uses English when giving lectures might be an example of her use of different formality and solidarity registers. These are linguistic terms describing how formal a person's speech is in different contexts as well as how a person changes their speech to fit in with family or with people of a similar social group. Write a paragraph examining how formality and solidarity registers can be used to explain what Amy Tan describes in this essay. Changing English English is an unusual language in that it now has more second language speakers than native speakers, because of its prevalence as a lingua franca around the world. With reference to Amy Tan's Mother Tongue, consider how the changing landscape of English might impact immigrants and language learners around the world. Write an essay about the various Englishes that you speak, particularly if English is not your first language. If English is your native language, how does your speech differ around your friends? Your family? Online? What slang terms do you use that are relatively new? Compare and Contrast The phenomenon of having two languages and having a complex relationship with them has been expressed by other writers just as Amy Tan describes in Mother Tongue. Find another example of this concept in writing and write a personal reflection comparing and contrasting the two pieces. Include your own experiences as relevant.