Traditional language manifests essential bonds through cultural identity which shapes ethnic domain and individuality. Communication empowers how ideas are contrived within society because of diversification and its impact on people. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s ruminative essay, How to Tame A Wild Tongue, she emphasizes how language and culture are inseparable and that a native tongue ties in with the identity of an individual. Anzaldúa also explores the emotional aspects of suppression by patrimonial language through pathos and anecdotes.
Gloria Anzaldúa’s How to Tame A Wild Tongue conveys how language is a key component to identity and how it interconnects the people within the world. She conceptualizes the socio-cultural challenges that beset the Chicanos. The author discusses her Chicana life during times of contention for immigrants and how she and her people are prevented from expressing colloquialism because of their embarrassment or doubt. Anzaldúa creates a proximity between the variations of Spanish and English by imbuing the concept of cultural colonialism and how it has pushed people to speak the language of their choosing rather than attempt to conform by learning.
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At the beginning of her essay, Anzaldúa opens with an experience she had with a dentist who is agitated by the stubbornness of her tongue, making it a problem for him. This anecdote instantiates her accent and how she is aware of what other people are thinking of her, especially when she speaks. She explains how the Chicano people have been resented due to their ethnic heritage and opinions formed by others gave reason for her self-consciousness. Additionally, Anzaldúa opens her passage with quotes in both Spanish and English and lists the different dialects spoken by the Chicanos and distinguishes between them to help the reader understand the idiosyncratic nature of language that exceeds the conventional style of grammar. The author implements rhetorical questions correlating to her identity, asking how to conceal her Chicano heritage and her affiliation with her culture. Many like her are not able to completely emerge themselves in the American way of life without sacrificing a part of themselves through their values and customs. She makes inquiries by asking how the formation of one’s identity is determined, whether it be by social influence or the independent thinking of an individual. Throughout the passage, Anzaldúa employs pathos to convey her exploitation by sharing moments of her childhood that have psychologically scarred her because of the physical abuse she faced for speaking Spanish, rather than English, in school. Even after conforming to the English language, she has been looked down upon by her people because the English she speaks is prevalent in her native tongue, causing Anzaldúa to feel even more discouraged going into adulthood. By using colloquial diction, the author construes how her means of enunciation was lambasted because of her background. She applies the phrase “linguistic terrorism” to construe the social stratification of the Chicanos and how their turn of phrase was defiled. The Chicanos feel defeated since they are the minorities of the region and turn to repressing their means of expression because of their status.
Anzaldúa discusses that on the border, her language is being forgotten; living in the lands between America and Mexico pose confusion of not knowing which side one belongs. She expresses her inclusion as a woman inhabiting this boundary and that Mexican immigrants face backlash from society and ethnic challenges because of their inferior status in the United States. Anzaldúa plies how the Spanish language has metamorphosed and developed, specifically in this region since the first colonization of the area. Present-day Chicano Spanish is a combination of different languages—including English, Spanish, and Native American sounds and words—all of which were commingled together to form the author’s native tongue. Since Chicano Spanish derives from a miscellany of dialects, it was seen as a “bastard” language because its origins do not trace back to a pure linguistic root, and instead, is considered a pauperized language by other Hispanics. The attack on their language is prevalent in the way the Chicanos speak by imposing gender roles on certain words and suppressing the individuality of women. During her childhood, Anzaldúa was made aware of certain phrases that pertained to a woman’s intended behavioral status such as, “Muchachitas bien criadas,” or, “well-bred girls do not answer back.” This conveys, that in her culture, there are foisted roles for the female gender. They are presumed to be polite and not talk back. Furthermore, she had learned that only derogatory phrases had only been applied to women, whereas they did not pertain to men. She perceives how the masculine plural has burgled women of their female identity because of their dialect. With the multitude of words and phrases that correlate to male and female roles, language is more biased to the males since they possess stronger and more condescending words whilst the females are given more disrespectful or subordinate adjectives. The border is dominated by incongruity and perplexity, but Anzaldúa states that her people have lied in wait hoping that the turmoil will finally cease.
Anzaldúa imbues a type of structural syntax that gives her writing a more powerful approach. She parallels English phrases to Spanish phrases in her narrative when stating, “En boca no entran moscas. Flies do not enter a closed mouth.” By using this interchange from the Spanish to English language, Anzaldúa indicates that more can be expressed by using not just one, but two, languages. This juxtaposing style is characterized by the balancing of an idea that is tantamount with the subject of what it intends to articulate. The author divides her thoughts in Spanish and English at the beginning of her paragraph which lays the foundation of the section by presenting truisms of silence and loneliness. The connotation she uses when writing entirely in Spanish is to employ a sense of identity for suppressed Chicano women and challenge the silence of damsels. It serves as a contradiction against the stereotype that women are meant to stay in quietude through her use of argumentative speech. Additionally, the Spanish phrases mirrored with the English translations intensify the syntax and structure of her argument. These shifts allocate a logical approach towards bellicose hegemony and animate the meaning of her linguistics. In doing so, Anzaldúa can surpass a systematized, logical narration by maximizing the classes and borders, and maltreatment she has faced against her identity as a climactic element. Anzaldúa’s specific assemblage of various sorts of language and discourse in her essay construes her passivity by her structure and syntax.
The language an individual speaks is their identity, no matter how they are judged for it their heritage can never be tainted. By uniting all peoples together, language is the threshold of a nation, which can accrue many benefits of being multicultural. Anzaldúa addresses these aspects and the suppression she has faced as a woman. Language is the embodiment of culture and depicts the identity of an individual based off their native background.
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