Language is a powerful tool. It is how we communicate with friends, family, and community. But when language becomes a barrier instead of a tool, things become tricky. One can experience discrimination, isolation, and hardships all due to not speaking a certain language. Immigrants facing language barriers experience a more difficult time and experience more challenges compared to someone who perfectly knows the language. 

Amy Tan is an American author and novelist who graduated with a masters degree in linguistics. In her personal essay, Mother Tongue, published in 1990 addresses the topic of language barriers and argues that everybody has different versions of English that they speak, and no one should be judged for not using the standard version of English. Tan dives into the idea of the different versions of English we tend to use when we are around certain people. She then proceeds to talk about her immigrant mother speaking broken English, and how her lack of language has affected her experience as a person living in the United States. She supports this claim by including her personal experiences, she first mentions her personal versions of english she uses in her everyday life, then she includes her mother’s version of english, and finally includes how these different versions affects her writing. Tan’s purpose in writing is to tell the tales of asian american women in order to shed light into the relationships of mothers and daughters all throughout asian cultures. She adopts a light and comedic tone for her audience, the readers of Mother Tongue, and others interested in the topic of language and culture. 

Throughout her personal essay, Amy Tan consistently uses anecdotes to tell the tales of her immigrant mother’s experience speaking broken english. The first account she gives us is when she had trouble communicating with a client and Tan had to step in to help her. “One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small portfolio and it just so happened we were going to go to New York the next week, our very first trip outside of california. I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing, ‘this is Mrs. Tan’” (Tan, pg 2). For Tan’s mother this was a normal occurrence of having to use her daughter as a bridge of communication in order to get people to understand her. Another instance of Tan being a bridge of communication for her mother, was when they were in the hospital for her mother’s CAT scan. In this memory we see Tan’s mother asking for her CAT scan but according to the doctors they had lost her scan. The doctors and nurses did not apologize for losing her records and did not sympathize with her. It was not until they personally spoke to Tan that they apologized and promised that they would find the records. This is a great example of how immigrants are treated differently solely on their English speaking skills. Tan was given better treatment because of her ability to speak standard English. This ties back to my argument of the challenges and difficulties immigrants have to face, they are treated unfairly and have to rely on those with better skills to serve as translators. Tan also uses logos to demonstrate how language barrier not only affects first generation immigrants, but second generation immigrants are also affected as well. Tan dives into her own personal feelings on how her mother affected her language growing up. She states that she felt that her abilities were limited due to her mother’s English, this led her to believe that family plays an important role in a child’s language skills. She explains that her language skills were reflected on all of her achievement tests, including SAT and IQ tests. These tests would always hear that she was better at math than in English, she justifies this by bringing up the fact that in math there is always one right answer while in English there answer is always a matter of point of view. She connects this idea to the lack of asian americans in literature and the surplus of asians in engineering, “Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English” (Tan, pg 3). She claims that asian students typically go for math related jobs because they feel more comfortable with math rather than with English, Tan also suggests that teachers tend to push them away from English and towards math and science. This goes to show that those of immigrant descent are in some ways looked down upon for their language skills. People would rather push them towards other paths instead of accepting their English as it is and seeing it as worthy as the standard English. We can connect this back to my original argument of the way immigrants struggle and have a difficult time with English, due to the fact that many people tend to not willing to fully accept them unless they speak perfect English.

The immigrant experience is not an easy one. They are disrespected, discriminated, and looked down upon due to their lack of language skills. This negative experience not only affects them personally, but it can have a great impact in the family. Kids may start to be embarrassed of their parents, or even doubt their own abilities. We must do our best to stop this cycle of discrimination that immigrants have to face, and make others see that a person’s value does not derive from their ability to speak certain languages. 

Sources

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” [Threepenny Review 1990; 1989.] The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues across the Disciplines. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 11th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill ,2011.