"I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others.
I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language -- the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all -- all the Englishes I grew up with."
"Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shaped the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world." -Amy Tan, "Mother Tongue"
After completing my Bachelor's degree in English in Decemeber, I plan to pursue a Master's degree in Speech and Language Pathology, and Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue" reinforced the desire to understand the development of language among children with special needs. First, her technique of introducing what "she is not" in the very beginning of her essay pushes the reader into a specified direction from the get-go. She ensures that her reading audience understands that this is not an essay about dialect or language but instead about genuine experiences involving language, which allows for more reader intriguement. Second, she "suggests" particular point of views that people hold in regards to people who do not speak "perfect" English without ranting or raving about them. She seems to have hot emotions toward such people but keeps her prose quite cool. Overall, she utilizes strong technique to illustrate how language plays to the writers advantage regardless of presupposed opinions about one's background or status. From reading her essay, I developed the following prompt.
Describe a conversation you overheard between two or more people in which at least one person used "broken" English or a unique accent or a conversation you were directly involved in where the other person used "broken" English or a different accent. What were your initial thoughts about this person and their "status" in life? Did you think they were poor or rich, educated or not, etc. What was the conversation about? For example, was it a conversation about Wall Street spoken with "broken" English? Or was it a conversation you overheard or were involved in with a special needs individual that had difficulty expressing his/herself.
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