Previous
Symbols
In “Mother Tongue,” Tan’s attempt to reconcile standardized English with her own “mother tongue” is a symbolic representation of her relationship with her mother. The essay emphasizes that language is highly flexible and that meaning is often dependent upon context. However, Tan discovers as a child that this is not necessarily the way the American education systems approaches language, which it sees as inflexible and rigid. Tan is forced to learn “standardized” English and finds that this form of the language is unforgiving—there is a right and a wrong way to say something, and this leaves very little room for the expressive but grammatically loose version of English that her Chinese mother speaks at home. Caught in the crossfire of two different “Englishes,” then, Tan becomes self-conscious of her “mother tongue.” In an over-correction of sorts, she develops a mastery of standardized English and incorporates this into her creative writing, but she soon realizes that she has effectively erased an important part of her own identity by excluding her mother’s linguistic influence. Moreover, she realizes that somebody like her mother would stand no chance of understanding her (Tan’s) writing, even though Tan is writing about characters who inhabit the same world as her mother. Her breakthrough comes when she realizes that she should incorporate her “mother tongue” into her writing, and this ultimately makes it easier for her to connect with her mother, who admiringly tells her that her first novel is easy to read—a comment Tan thinks of as the highest possible praise. Language, then, comes to represent not just her individual relationship with her mother, but the complex relationship between immigrant parents and their first-generation children, who are in many ways straddled between two worlds.
Language Quotes in Mother Tongue
The Mother Tongue quotes below all refer to the symbol of Language. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Mother Tongue
Quotes
And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her […] —a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
But to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “broken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness. I’ve heard other terms used […] But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s perceptions of the limited-English speaker.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgement call, a matter of opinion and personal experience.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I wrote what I thought to be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally prove I had mastery over the English language.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English I spoke to my mother, which for lack of a better term might be described as “simple”; the English she used with me, which for lack of a better term might be described as “broken”; my translation of her Chinese, which could certainly be described as “watered down”; and what I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal language, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese structure.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Mother Tongue LitChart as a printable PDF.
Language Symbol Timeline in Mother Tongue
The timeline below shows where the symbol Language appears in Mother Tongue. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Mother Tongue
...Tan opens the essay with a disclaimer: she is not a “scholar” of the English language. Instead, she self-identifies as a writer, focusing on the power and strength of words within...
(full context)
...a professional tone. The speech was heavy, and “burdened” with standardized forms of English; a language Tan associates with school, not her mother.
(full context)
...frequent changes in speech, does not detect the shift. Tan reflects on her use of language, identifying the English used with her mother and husband as one of “intimacy, a different...
(full context)
...linguistic studies, Tan suggests that children of American immigrants are perhaps most affected by the languages their parents speak at home. In her childhood, Tan does not perform poorly in her...
(full context)
...standard English don’t elicit the associations for Tan that her teachers would hope for; instead, language is visual. To achieve the result that a “sunset is to nightfall” word association exercise...
(full context)
...and accept that encapsulates the space between English and Chinese that is nonexistent in English language tests. Tan’s newfound value in the language of her “mother tongue” alters her previous conception...
(full context)
