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Critical Analysis of "Mother Tongue"

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Submitted By nwiest01
Words 906
Pages 4
Nicholas Wiest
Beverly Williamson
English 111
September 21st, 2012

Critical Analysis Essay I have chosen “Mother Tongue” for the subject of my essay. I chose this essay because Amy Tan has a unique writing style which has tone that is clear and identifiable. Tan makes her arguments in a way that is easily understood. While her tone is sometimes humorous and captivating, it still clarifies some serious issues. These qualities among others leave Tan’s work to be desired by almost any reader because her tone and style are both genuine and upfront. This essay will talk about how Tan’s work in her essay “Mother Tongue” uses several different styles and tones to make her point of regarding the differences of her communications with her mother and other people in her life. In a way, Tan’s story is about tone and style, in the sense that how you convey a message is just as important as the content of your statement. Tan’s essay examines the differences in how she communicates with her mother, and how she communicates with everyone else in her immediate environment. I find it interesting that you can find examples of her point right in the story. You can see that Tan focused her essay to be grammatically correct, and descriptive, so that the readers such as ourselves can interpret it. It’s clear that she considers this in the very beginning of the text where she states, “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”(Tan 34). Tan examines how tone and accent are something that she has thought a lot about, and has learned to utilize for her writing purposes. This is interesting because in a lot of writing, the writers tone is almost effortless, a simple part of the way that the writer communicates. With Tan however, her tone is something that she has built and

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