Cover Letter for Rhetorical Analysis Essay
My audience for my Rhetorical Analysis Essay is for my mother and people would look at someone differently for having an accent or just not speaking the “standardized” English as anyone else would. The way I had to specifically tailor my language and rhetorical choices into appealing the audience of my mother and certain people is to make sure that I showed how “standardized” English is not the same for all people. I also tried to pin the focus on how it can deeply affect people who have “broken” or “fractured” English, as Amy Tan had explained in her personal essay. I made my connection to Amy Tan’s Mother’s Tongue and the purpose of how English takes a toll on her life and to others in general.
The many meaningful insights I’ve gained is that despite someone not having the proper knowledge of English, it doesn’t mean that they should be ignored and not be given the same amount of attention and help like anyone else. Concepts/terms that have impacted my learning the most is trying to create the argument and have it all connected easily with the evidence and analysis. I didn’t want the evidence and argument to connect while it was going to be hard to show how the analysis of the even connected back to the main argument of the Rhetorical Analysis Essay. I was also impacted by figuring out how to effectively organize the essay as I continued to create the layout of how I wanted the essay to be in. I need to conveniently make the evidence, then the analysis, then have it all easily flow into the next paragraph to introduce how it all plays a part together.
In this phase with this essay, I was able to effectively think about the things that I wanted to add into the essay to have it help build onto my essay. I even was able to try and find the connection that the text and my own purpose would have together, all in all creating the main aspects of the essay. I was even able to develop even better strategies for drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing, even though there were a few roadblocks I was able to overcome. Through this whole writing process, I was able to engage more actively in the collaborative and social aspects of this whole process. Consequently, I believe that all of that was thoroughly shown in this Rhetorical Analysis Essay about Amy Tan’s Mother’s Tongue.
Rhetorical Analysis Essay: Mother’s Tongue by Amy Tan
America is the country that became as great as it did because of immigrants. Without their help, we wouldn’t have such tall buildings, nice roads, big stores, etc. People from different areas that come here for an escape of the harsh reality of their home country, all to have a better life for themselves and their families. They would do anything to have a better life for themselves and the people that they love. How can they even do that when people born in America think of them as low or that they don’t belong here? In American society, they push standards and different stereotypes at them causing their lives to be hard as they push themselves for greatness. Those standards and stereotypes are what an author with a Chinese immigrant mother and father tries to talk about and change people’s perspective on them. This author’s name is Amy Ruth Tan, best known for her book The Joy Luck Club, she was born in the U.S., but her mother and father were from China and came to America to escape the Chinese Civil War.
She had later created a personal essay that was made to talk about her experience with the hardships of having an immigrant parent and their struggle with English as she grew up. That personal essay named, Mother’s Tongue, that published this essay in 1990. Mother’s Tongue includes many different experiences and her thoughts of how English has become a language barrier to her mother and other who use broken English. It gives insight to how it was for Amy Tan to grow up in the U.S. and know standardized English and must do things for her mother when she couldn’t. For example, she would answer calls for her mother or complain to people when they wouldn’t take her seriously. In her essay, she provides vivid details to have the reader understand the context or what is happening without any confusion. Throughout her essay, she pushes her writing to show her audience that so many Asian Americans and other immigrants are affected since they’re pushed away and judged for this language barrier, thus being conveyed through Pathos, Logos and Ethos to support her argument on the language barrier that is English.
Throughout Mother’s Tongue, Amy Tan used various examples to support her argument about English using Pathos. She had tried to find various ways to show the emotions that were happening in many of her experiences with her mother and her challenges with English. The reason of heavily using emotions and conveying the effect it has can help the reader relate to how Tan feels in the moment. An experience that Tan talks about in Mother’s Tongue is when Tan was 15 she had to answer the phone for her mother and pretend it was her because her English was better. She had even explained how she even had to ask for information and complain to them since her mother couldn’t. As she was on the phone with many people to help her mother out with things she couldn’t do. Then when her mother proceeded to “talk more loudly” while Tan was on the phone, you can sense the anger that she wanted to portray in her personal essay (Amy Tan, 2). Tan is explaining what it is like when she had to complaint to people who were taking advantage of her mother. This would cause her mother to get very impatient and start to get angry and irrational as she talked on the phone. Consequently, she shared how she felt when they had finally got to meet with the person on the phone in New York and how she was so embarrassed that she was “sitting there red-faced and quiet” (Amy Tan, 2). The usage of such vivid languages, emotions, and expressions is how she persuades the audience to relate to her feelings and embarrassment.
Other than Pathos, Amy Tan also uses Logos by giving an explanation as to why she was invested in the English language and why it had such a big impact on her life growing up. She had explained how her mother’s “broken” or “fractured” English is what made her ashamed how she spoke. She even goes on to say at different stores, banks, restaurants, etc., wouldn’t give her good service, “pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (Amy Tan, 2). Amy is giving logical information on how she felt about her mother and the way she spoke. She clearly demonstrates that she was upset at the simple fact that she didn’t speak normally like anyone else would. She even points this feeling of shame out by her use of the word, “pretended”. Therefore, this helped back up the logic behind reasons of feeling embarrassed and even ashamed of her. She just wanted her mother to be a normal person, but others would push her to the side due to the way she spoke, this caused a lot of tension and affected how she would act or feel around her. All her logical reasons that she states is persuading the reader more and more to get her point across about the language barrier her mother has.
Lastly, Amy Tan uses Ethos to show the credibility behind everything she says for the audience to trust and believe that what she was saying was true, she does this by providing personal experiences with vivid descriptions and details. Tan explains about an appointment her mother had about a benign brain tumor and she had a CAT scan, but the hospital had lost that CAT scan. Thus, providing details on her mother’s anxiousness since her husband and son, Amy’s father and brother, died from brain tumors. But once her mother told the doctor to call Tan, that’s when the doctor had stated that “a conference call on Monday would be held” they even said that they apologized for her mother’s inconvenience (Amy Tan, 2). This is a prime example of Ethos because she is showing credibility by explaining how her mother had a CAT Scan appointment but even related it with her father and brother when her mother was anxious about her diagnosis. Her speaking about this experience makes the reader trust her and it even gives a little more insight into her life as they continue to read her personal essay. She even goes on to talk about more of her many experiences that she has about her mother and the many topic of her personal essay, English. All her experiences bring more focus to her character and how these many certain experiences had a specific part into developing her character. Through her very tone and the way that she even handled the very situation for her mother when she needed it the most, thus having an impact on her character of being helpful.
In conclusion, Amy Tan uses the rhetorical strategies of Pathos, Logos, and Ethos, all to have the audience be persuaded towards her argument on how English became a language barrier for her mother and it even impacted her. Therefore, these rhetorical devices are bringing her closer into achieving her purpose of writing her personal essay as it starts to appeal to her readers. With Pathos, she uses vivid languages to have the audience related to the emotions she wants to be known. By using Pathos, she can make her emotions connect to the argument and push the focus onto what her purpose of the essay is to go into her favor. With Logos, she provides logic to why English is a language barrier and the ways that it had even impacted her life as she was growing up. The usage of Logos can help bring common sense into what her argument and easily convince someone why what she is saying is smart because it makes sense. Lastly with Ethos, she gives credibility to how these examples are personal and not fake and used for other purposes, all to help make the audience trust in what she says in her personal essay. Her tone had created a sense of persuasiveness as she continued to talk about how society pushes too much pressure into having people, immigrants preferably, to speak “standardized” English. In the end, the many stereotypes that is pushed upon immigrants and their struggles to get adapted to English is the reason why many don’t get the help they need due to people treating them unfairly, all because of people taking advantage of this flaw. Instead of ignoring their needs, we should be helping them get the assistance they need.
