In the opening line of “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, the author starts by using the strategy of discrediting herself by saying she is not a scholar and can only give her own opinion. This strategy grabs the audience’s attention, who are usually more wealthy individuals that may be arrogant and think they are superior to others. This strategy of discrediting herself is an effective way to make the audience want to read what she has to say.
Another rhetorical strategy Amy Tan uses throughout the text is providing dialogue of conversations that she had with her mother, while giving a speech, and with others to portray the different types of Englishes that she uses. This strategy allows the reader to better understand what the author means when she says “Englishes”, and better understand what these types of Englishes sound like.
Finally, towards the end of the text, another strategy I noticed was how the author transitioned from saying how she would write in standard English to prove that she had mastered the language, to embracing all of the different types of Englishes she uses. This strategy provided insight into the author’s change of perspective and how she learned to embrace her different Englishes even though they were not publicly accepted as real or official English.
Completing this worksheet may take more time than you think. It’s worth the time. The information you gather will help you later when writing up assignments. But more importantly, the process of addressing each of the questions below will slowly work to change how you read texts. Keep in mind that some answers will not be obvious or even observable in the text, and so you may have to do some critical thinking and, at times, even some online research. Use full sentences. Take as much space as you need.
Context & Exigence: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? What year is the text published? What is the exigence–that is, what motivating occasion/issue/concern prompted the writing? The motivating occasion could be a current or historical event, a crisis, pending legislation, a recently published alternative view, or another ongoing problem.
The conversation the speaker responds to in this talk is his experiences having issues socializing, taking criticism personally, and allowing other’s statements to put him down and lower his self-esteem. This talk was uploaded in 2016. The speaker’s motivating/turn-around occasion was when he decided to face his fear of socializing and his insecurities and to put aside other people’s opinions about him and his accent.
Author: Who is the author of this text? What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue?
The speaker of this talk is Safwat Saleem, a visual artist. Saleem’s investment in the issue is his own personal experiences with social anxiety, stuttering, and criticism due to his accent and seeing criticism against minorities. Saleem also uses his work as a channel to get rid of these notions against minorities.
Text: What can you find out about the publication? What is the genre of the text (e.g., poem, personal essay, essay, news/academic article, blog, textbook chapter, etc.)? How do the conventions of that genre help determine the depth, complexity, and even appearance of the argument? What information about the publication or source (magazine, newspaper, advocacy Web site) helps explain the writer’s perspective or the structure and style of the argument?
This talk was a TED talk presented at an official TED conference. These talks tend to be in the style of a speech towards an audience, which is how this talk was presented.
Audience: Who is the author’s intended audience? What can you infer about the audience (think about beliefs and political association but also age, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, education, geographic location, religion, etc.)? Look for clues from the text (especially the original publication) to support your inference.
The author’s intended audience are the audience and viewers of TED, and more specifically may be those who think that having an accent or being a minority is not normal, and that normal people are only those who are not minorities.
Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?
The author is trying to challenge the pre-existing notion that minorities are not normal. I know this because he specifically states that that is the goal of his work during his talk.
Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take?
I believe the author’s main idea during his talk was to try to change people’s perspective on those who are minorities and do not speak in the same accent, or look the same way as some other people would expect them to. I also found that the talk may be motivating to those who have social anxiety themselves to face their fear like Saleem did.
Evidence: How is the argument supported? Types of support include reasons and logical explanations as well as evidence. Types of evidence include anecdotes, examples, hypothetical situations, (expert) testimony, quotes, citing sources, statistics, charts/graphs, research the author or another source conducts, scientific or other facts, general knowledge, historical references, metaphors/analogies, etc.
The speaker’s argument is supported by statistics. For example, his argument that people who do not meet a specific set of expectations are not considered normal was supported when he presented the statistic that in 2013 and 2014, 8 and 11 percent of children’s books had a character of color.
Rhetorical Strategies: What aspects of this text stand out for you as a rhetorical reader? In other words, what do you observe about what the author strategically does (consciously or not) in hopes of appealing to their audience? List here as many observations as you can make about what the text does.
An aspect of Saleem’s talk that stood out for me was when he mentioned that even during the talk itself, he was anxious and would prefer to be secluded and alone. This strategically shows that even though he still has the fear of socializing, he faces and embraces it.
Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.
N/A
Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?
One thing I want to remember about this talk is the statistic that 8% and 11% of characters in books were of color in ’13 and ’14. It was very surprising to me how low the number is.
Completing this worksheet may take more time than you think. It’s worth the time. The information you gather will help you later when writing up assignments. But more importantly, the process of addressing each of the questions below will slowly work to change howyou read texts. Keep in mind that some answers will not be obvious or even observable in the text, and so you may have to do some critical thinking and, at times, even some online research. Use full sentences. Take as much space as you need.
Context & Exigence: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? What year is the text published? What is the exigence–that is, what motivating occasion/issue/concern prompted the writing? The motivating occasion could be a current or historical event, a crisis, pending legislation, a recently published alternative view, or another ongoing problem.
The topic this text is responding to is that it does not make sense for there to be a standard convention of English, and the death of Reggie Jordan. The text was published in 1988. The motivation behind this text is the concern that whites try to enforce a standard type of English that they speak as the only correct way to speak English.
Author: Who is the author of this text? What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue?
The author of the text is June Jordan, a professor of the Arts of Black English at SUNY Stony Brook. June Jordan’s investment in the issue is that they want Black English to be accepted as a correct version of English-speaking and stop oppression.
Text: What can you find out about the publication? What is the genre of the text (e.g., poem, personal essay, essay, news/academic article, blog, textbook chapter, etc.)? How do the conventions of that genre help determine the depth, complexity, and even appearance of the argument? What information about the publication or source (magazine, newspaper, advocacy Web site) helps explain the writer’s perspective or the structure and style of the argument?
The genre of this text is textbook chapter. This is because the text is a part of the author, June Jordan‘s book, “On Call”.
Audience: Who is the author’s intended audience? What can you infer about the audience (think about beliefs and political association but also age, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, education, geographic location, religion, etc.)? Look for clues from the text (especially the original publication) to support your inference.
The author’s intended audience would be educators and students, since it was published to the Harvard Educational Review, which is affiliated with the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?
The author is trying to persuade and inform others that there should not be a standard English in the US that white people try to enforce and claim is superior over other standards of English, or the only correct way to speak English.
Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take?
The author’s argument is to prove that oppression against black people and the way they speak English exists, and to try to create a movement to fight against it.
Evidence: How is the argument supported? Types of support include reasons and logical explanations as well as evidence. Types of evidence include anecdotes, examples, hypothetical situations, (expert) testimony, quotes, citing sources, statistics, charts/graphs, research the author or another source conducts, scientific or other facts, general knowledge, historical references, metaphors/analogies, etc.
The argument is supported by the author giving the example of how white people English is considered the correct way to speak English, and by explaining the events leading and preceding to the death of Reggie Jordan.
Rhetorical Strategies: What aspects of this text stand out for you as a rhetorical reader? In other words, what do you observe about what the author strategically does(consciously or not) in hopes of appealing to their audience? List here as many observations as you can make about what the text does.
The strategy that stood out to me was the listing of rules created for Black English, assuming it as an official way of speaking English.
Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.
Jordan, June, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 58, no. 3, Harvard Education Publishing Group, Sept. 1988
Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?
One thing that stood out for me in this text is when the author pointed out that English is spoken in 33 countries, and it is illogical for a 34th country to come in and set its own rules and values of how the language should be spoken. This is very powerful because it logically proves that it does not make sense for a specific English-speaking country to enforce rules and values of the language, when it is spoken by many others.
This text was very interesting and gave a very important lesson. The author, Amy Tan, starts off by introducing herself and showing her love for writing and “languages”, being all the different types of Englishes she speaks and interacts with. Amy was giving a talk with her mother, whose first language was not English. Amy’s mother was in the crowd hearing her speaking “perfect” English, speaking carefully spoken grammatical phrases, with past perfect tenses.
While walking with her mother, they were talking about prices of furniture, Amy heard herself saying “Not waste money that way”. Her husband did not think anything of it, since Amy realized that her speaking a different type of simpler English with her family for over 20 years. Amy’s mother often communicates with others in English, however most of Amy’s friends say that they do not understand everything that she says.
To Amy, her mother’s English was perfect. She thought it was vivid and clear, since she grew up talking to her mother and knows exactly what she means when she speaks English in a certain way. On the other hand, others describe Amy’s mother’s English as “broken” or “fractured”. Amy was strongly against these terms as she felt that they degraded her speaking ability. At first, Amy was embarrassed of her mother’s “limited” English.
Since Amy was a child, she used to have her make phone calls acting like her, since Amy spoke English in a way others thought sounded much more formal. Amy’s mother also experienced discrimination just because of the way she spoke. For example, when they were at the hospital to view results of a CAT scan, and the hospital staff said that they had lost the results, showing no sympathy to Amy’s mother. That is, until Amy called with her perfect English and suddenly the attitude of the doctor changed, and they were assured that the CAT scan would be found and they apologized for their mistake.
Amy decided to be a writer and author of “The Joy Luck Club”, and other fictional stories. At first, she wrote her pieces in conventional English, to prove she could speak and write perfect English. Later, she embraced all of the different Englishes she grew up with, and began writing texts in all of these different Englishes.
The important lessons I took from this reading is that you do not need to follow the norm of the society to fit in and be seen as normal. Everybody should embrace who they actually are, and speak the way that they like to speak. This text can also be taken as a lesson to sympathize with others who have trouble communicating, such as Amy’s mother, and try to accommodate and help them instead of treating them inferiorly just because of something so irrelevant – an accent.
Completing this worksheet may take more time than you think. It’s worth the time. The information you gather will help you later when writing up assignments. But more importantly, the process of addressing each of the questions below will slowly work to change how you read texts. Keep in mind that some answers will not be obvious or even observable in the text, and so you may have to do some critical thinking and, at times, even some online research. Use full sentences. Take as much space as you need.
Context & Exigence: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? What year is the text published? What is the exigence–that is, what motivating occasion/issue/concern prompted the writing? The motivating occasion could be a current or historical event, a crisis, pending legislation, a recently published alternative view, or another ongoing problem.
The topic this text is responding to is discrimination and negativity towards what is perceived as “broken English”. The text was published in 1990, with the exigence or motivating concern being the discrimination against unconventional “Englishes”.
Author: Who is the author of this text? What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue?
The author of this text is Amy Tan, a writer who always loved language, and an author of “The Joy Life Club”, who is invested in this issue since she experienced it second hand with her mother.
Text: What can you find out about the publication? What is the genre of the text (e.g., poem, personal essay, essay, news/academic article, blog, textbook chapter, etc.)? How do the conventions of that genre help determine the depth, complexity, and even appearance of the argument? What information about the publication or source (magazine, newspaper, advocacy Web site) helps explain the writer’s perspective or the structure and style of the argument?
The genre of the publication is a personal essay. This is because it talked about personal issues and experiences the author and her mother were having. The text used anecdote and oxymoron to add depth to the argument.
Audience: Who is the author’s intended audience? What can you infer about the audience (think about beliefs and political association but also age, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, education, geographic location, religion, etc.)? Look for clues from the text (especially the original publication) to support your inference.
I believe the author’s intended audience would be those who think that it is not fine to speak unconventional, or “broken” English. The reason I think this is because she is trying to convey the idea that there are many ways English can be spoken, or “Englishes”.
Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?
The author is trying to inform and educate readers that somebody’s version of English dialect should not dictate how they are treated, or be called “broken” English, just because it does not follow the standard that some people expect. I know this because of the examples, personal stories, and tone that the author presented in the text.
Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take?
I believe that the main claim the author is trying to make is that people should not be judged or treated inferiorly, just because they speak a different type of English that others are not used to.
Evidence: How is the argument supported? Types of support include reasons and logical explanations as well as evidence. Types of evidence include anecdotes, examples, hypothetical situations, (expert) testimony, quotes, citing sources, statistics, charts/graphs, research the author or another source conducts, scientific or other facts, general knowledge, historical references, metaphors/analogies, etc.
The author’s argument is supported by explanations of events that she experienced and rhetorical devices, such as anecdotes. An example of this is when she hears herself saying “Not waste money that way”, then realizes that her husband did not find anything weird about it, since that is how they normally speak to eachother.
Rhetorical Strategies: What aspects of this text stand out for you as a rhetorical reader? In other words, what do you observe about what the author strategically does (consciously or not) in hopes of appealing to their audience? List here as many observations as you can make about what the text does.
The author explains that she is not a scholar but loves languages The “languages” the author loves are Englishes The author lists the types of Englishes she is exposed to Author explains what motivated her to write She embraces the different types of Englishes she deals with
Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” The Threepenny Review No. 43 (1990): 7-8. JSTOR. Web. 31 Aug. 2022.
Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?
The one thing that I want to remember about this text is the event of the author’s mother being told that her CAT scan was lost and she would need to make another appointment with no sympathy shown, until the author called in with perfect English and the office’s attitude changed. This is important to remember because it is important to sympathize with and try to help others who have trouble communicating because they are immigrants.
Instructions: Please respond to the questions that follow with as much detail and description that you can. The more you put into reflecting now on the complexities of your language and literacy development, the better off you’ll be in completing our major assignment for our first phase of this course. Take as much space as you need.
When it comes to your experiences with language (speaking and listening) and literacy (reading and writing), what specific moments in your life can you recall that are particularly vivid or that emerge as being significant to you? Yes, it could be an example from your earliest memories of learning to speak, read, and write (in school or elsewhere), but it doesn’t have to be. It could be a memorable encounter—a moment of tension, confusion, or triumph. It could be about experiences developing additional dialects/languages and advanced literacies (i.e., learning to speak/write in different peer groups, at school, at work, with family, online, in different locations across the nation or world, etc. Please select 3 moments to describe. Then, explain why each is interesting or significant.
1. During my childhood, till I was about 8 years old, I had a lisp and went to speech therapy for about a year. This experience helped me develop my speaking skills.
2. Watching Arabic shows and movies taught me to speak and understand Arabic (my second language) far better.
3. Experiencing different dialects of Arabic with my friends of Arab background but from different countries/regions.
What specific materials or artifacts (i.e., objects, writing, learning materials, pictures, video recordings, etc.) from your past can you locate/recall and that in some way represent a meaningful moment in your reading/writing development? This can be something like a journal or book, but also anything at all (e.g., a toy, piece of furniture, cereal box, art supplies, etc.) What memories and feelings can you extract from these examples you’ve gathered/recalled? Explain.
A movie I can remember from my past is Nemo, my favorite movie when I was a child. Constantly watching Nemo growing up helped me develop my speaking skills.
For better or worse, who and what impacted how, when, and why you developed your languages and literacies? Who in your family, at school, among your peer group, or in your community played a part? How did your particular situation or experience shape your literacy? That is, what sorts of issues, experiences, organizations, or life circumstances played a part? What kinds of languages and literacies did you gain from those people and your particular situation? How? Why? Explain.
For better, being around my siblings and family and hearing them communicate helped me develop my language speaking skills in both English and Arabic during my childhood, which enabled me to speak full sentences in 2 languages at a very young age.
In what ways do you see your language, reading, and writing capabilities as having social consequences or impacting your life circumstances—that is, what advantages did/do you have and what disadvantages did/do you face as a result of your language and literacy learning?
I believe that developing my language literacy abilities during a young age was an advantage, since it benefitted me as I was able to more efficiently communicate with others.
How might your experience with language and literacy connect to larger social realities (e.g., of your life, family, generation, gender, race, culture, nation, geographic location, historical moment, etc.)?
My experiences with language & literacy can be connected to larger social realities since knowing 2 languages enables me to communicate with many different cultures people from different ethnic backgrounds, since there are many countries which speak either English or Arabic as their primary language.
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