Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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Cover Letter 

My audience in this essay is anyone that has immigrants as parents or anyone that is an actual immigrant and I talk about this audience specifically through the utilization of Amy Tan’s  personal essay Mother Tongue. I use Tan’s text in order to analyze how she uses rhetorical devices and features in order to appeal to her specific audience. I had to constantly keep in mind while writing that I had to use language that was centered around rhetoric and help to explain how it connected back to her audience. The most helpful insights I’ve gained in this phase regarding language and literacy is that language can have such heavy impacts on someone’s life and can allow for self-conflict and turmoil within their lives. Language can also bring people together and unite them in ways you could never imagine which is a very beneficial thing for people. So I’ve learned that language can have both good and bad impacts on people and sometimes the bad experiences can lead to good experiences in life. Rhetoric, rhetorical situation, exigence, audience, and argument are all concepts/terms that have most impacted my learning and writing practices. These concepts are what have been driving my writing lately and they’ve helped to make my writing solid and helps my writing to stick. This phase’s assignment helped me to achieve the Course Learning Outcomes such as 1. Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations and 2. Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes. I’ve had to use both of these Learning Outcomes in my writing and they’ve helped me to get my thoughts in my writing together. 

Rhetorical Analysis Essay 

Language based discrimination can be seen in many forms and it doesn’t matter that it can either be a macro or micro discrimination it has the common goals; which are to tear down and make people feel as if they’re inferior because of the way they communicate with people. Language based discrimination is very common and is often time downplayed and not taken seriously; which is why author’s have taken the time to shed light on the issue through the use of rhetoric and rhetorical devices in order to appeal to an audience. More specifically, one author that discusses language based discriminiation through rhetoric is Amy Tan. Tan wrote a personal essay Mother Tongue that was published in an American literary magazine Threepenny Review  in the 1900’s; during which it was very popular. This specific essay approached and addressed the topic of language based discrimination and gave readers an upclose and personal view on her experiences and struggles with language based discrimination, through the use of rhetorical devices. Tan’s essay is directed towards immigrant children and aims to help them with their struggles in language by explaining and showing them how to understand and appreciate their mother tongue and even their parent’s language through her appeal to emotion and logic. The author appeals to emotion and logic in hopes to pull in readers and make her writing more relatable; which would ultimately make reading easier.

Immigrant children are more likely to experience language based discrimination at least once in their lifetimes; which is why Tan decided to take a pathos approach in her writing in order to appeal and relate to children that have experienced what she has. Tan demonstrates how linguistic discimination affects her and her mother’s lives with a trip to the doctor’s office by writing “ And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English-lo and behold-we had assurances the CAT scan would be found” (Tan 3).  In this piece of evidence  Tan exhibits how linguistic discrimination can happen in places that you would least expect it and draws attention to the fact that language can have unforeseen impacts on what should be straight forward situations. This specific doctor scene is appealing to a reader’s emotions and evoking all types of questions and emotions about why doctor’s who are supposed to help and take care of their patients willingly denied their patient information due to something as frivolous as their dialect. And with the appeal being emotions readers will look at  Mother Tongue in a different perspective and realize that it’s relatable and they might even take advice from it and apply it to their everyday lives; which should lead to a happier life for them. By making immigrant children her audience it helps to personalize the essay and by personalizing the essay it makes reading easier and helps to touch more people with the same problems as her and let them know that they’re in this together. 

Language based discrimination almost always happens to children of immigrants and can cause for them to experience self-conflict and make them question themselves and their parents languages and because of this Tan utilized  logical appeal which would be far more important and would make their situations understandable.  In this part of the text the author explains how she had a relatively negative perception of her mother’s English by writing “ I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say” (Tan 2).  In this part of her text Tan writes about her thoughts on her mother’s English when she was younger and talks about how she felt “ashamed” and talks about her “ limited perception” of her mother; which goes to show that what we see and think really is “limited” and our views on are our parents can be clouded. Tan appeals to logic by getting her readers to think about a time where they felt ashamed of their parents English and gets them to think about why they felt like that and tries to help them understand and appreciate these feelings. 9 times out of 10 kids will have  experienced what Tan experienced and they should learn from it and gain a newfound appreciation of their parents when they read Mother Tongue  simply because she puts it into perspective for these children of immigrants. Also by taking this logical approach Tan helps to raise awareness of language based discrimination and let her audience know that they aren’t alone and that there are definitely people out there that they can relate to; which should even inspire other children to help other kids that might have experienced what they have.

In conclusion, Tan’s main goal was to appeal to her audience of immigrant children through emotion and logic and help them come to terms with any language based discrimination they may have experienced. This will help them make sense out of their struggles with language and teach them how to appreciate and understand these experiences. And with her writing this essay she will help to draw attention to this issue and help kids to not feel so lonely with their problems. This essay could be seen as an outreached hand for most kids and can even be looked at as something to ground them and bring understanding to their lives. Most importantly this essay helps to bring attention to the fact that people just aren’t as nice and look for anyway to bring people down in which case they prey on their language and they need someone to be there for them and let them know that they aren’t alone in what they’re going through. So the next time someone either criticizes you or denies you service because of the tongue or language that you carry you can either turn the other cheek and don’t let them get to you or you could give them a piece of your mind either way both responses make you look powerful and in control.