Literary Analysis Of Amy Tan's 'Mother Tongue'

‘Mother Tongue’ is a short story written by Amy Tan for American literary magazine, The Threepenny Review (Shea, n.d.). This text raises ideas around the way we speak or use language throughout our daily lives, and what truly counts as ‘proper’ English.

When first viewing this text, we can see that it appears to be a story or article written specifically for a collective-style book or magazine. Key style points that prove this are the author’s name located underneath the title of the piece above the beginning of the story, and also her name and the title placed in the right upper corners of the pages.
The font style is very plain but looks as if it was typed on a typewriter, which immediately gives the impression that it is an article. The

She describes these as her different forms of “Englishes”. There is the English she uses when speaking with an audience, sentences that are meticulously shaped. She describes this style as burdened with “all the forms of standard English” (Tan, 1990, para. 3). It is the type of English that we all learn to use throughout our school career, so that we are able to employ it when we pursue higher education, or for use in job situations.
“Family talk” is what she calls her other form of English. This is the language spoken with family; it was the language she grew up with. It is a way of speaking that those with English as their native tongue would call ‘broken’. The sentences lack basic grammatical structure, and though it is understandable, this makes it harder to follow. The language does not flow as smoothly. Whilst Tan understands this, she does not hear it this way. To Tan, her mother’s way of speaking is “vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery” (1990, para. 7). Something an untrained ear would find difficult to

7). It also deals with the problems her mother has faced with communication herself. Within this, Tan addresses the problems when being Asian American and growing up with the so-called lack of ‘proper’ English in the home. Teachers are prone to guiding Asian students away from writing and English language studies towards maths because of the way they communicate verbally. Completely disregarding the level of competency they may have with reading and understanding. This has allowed a very stereotypical image to be created. Tan broke the stereotypical mould, and wrote a story using all of the different Englishes she used to capture her mother’s “intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts” (1990, para. 21). This is what language is