How To Tame A Wild Tongue By Gloria Anzaldúa

In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldúa exposes her feelings about social and cultural difficulties that Mexican immigrants face when being raised in the United States. She establishes comparisons among English, Spanish and their variations and cultural influence on people’s “preference” to speak one language rather than the other. Anzaldúa uses ethos to effectively characterize her personal accounts of how the languages she spoke hindered her by presenting her evidence in a clear and credible manner by showing both sides of the argument because of the deep emotional connection she feels towards the use of both Spanish and English while talking when it isn’t the norm of the surrounding people. Anzaldúa started off her passage with

“I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess - that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the comer of the classroom for "talking back" to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name” (Anzaldúa 34). She showed that she was punished directly for speaking her native tongue. Ultimately, enhancing the reader’s ability to empathize with her on what she has gone through. However, with this empathy lies a divide by the use of her personal experience. Using personal examples allows her to build her credibility within her audience because she uses her experience to shine a light on the hardships she and other bi-lingual Spanish speakers encountered daily. She, like many others, lived through “taming of her wild tongue” while trying to get the “Anglo Whites” to understand how being forced to speak another language perfectly because they didn’t want to accept the difference. There is the urgency of adaption for the Hispanics to speak English fluently and without an accent so they were

To Anzaldúa language is power, but more than power it is the identity of many cultures wrapped into one for a single person, it is how that assimilate themselves with many cultures at the same time. In her text she goes back to her childhood where her mother told her she needed to speak English because it is best for her future. “I want you to speak English. Pa' hallar buen trabajo tienes que 5 saber hablar el ingles bien. Que vale toda lu educacion si todavia hablas ingles con un 'accent” (Anzaldúa 34). By sharing this connection with her mother she is asserting a habitus while growing up. It was becoming a collection of habits of people making her change the way she was because people didn’t understand what she was saying and it would affect her future because people weren’t accepting her culture. She is establishing a stronger connecting with her audience because many of the Hispanic culture faced these challenges, but she is also connecting with the Anglo side of her audience because she is showing them that because her language wasn’t accepted her own mother was trying to change her because it would affect her future as an American citizen. She is strongly expressing that the change affected much more than her speech, it affected her emotionally and it affected her