Ivarsson 1
Victor Ivarsson
English 100 – 19
Professor Fisher
Essay 4 – draft one
December 9, 2014

Intro: The world we live in today is far more globalized than that of our previous generation. Before social media and other instant forms of communication existed, people did not need to worry about speaking a different language or the way it was spoken. Dialects and accents had little meaning because of the barriers that surrounded each community prohibited the inhabitants of much interaction with people from other societies. Today however, people can speak with each other regardless of location, which emphasizes the importance of the power of language. The negative consequences that come from this is that those who do not master a language perfectly or differ from perfect speech are discriminated against in the general community. A phenomenon, which writer Gloria Anzaldúa, who wrote the article “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” calls “Linguistic Terrorism.” According to her, linguistic terrorism negates not only the speaker, but also the experiences and culture behind that person (Anzaldúa).

Thesis: Although language can be used as a tool of power, the use of faulty and imprecise language negates the speaker and causes negative consequences.

Body 1, Tan: An accent is an example of imprecise English, which causes people to make negative or positive assumptions about the speaker based on the information that accent reveals.
Example: In Amy Tan´s essay “Mother Tongue,” she provides an example drawn from experiences her mother had in America as an immigrant with English as her second language.
Quote: “I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not even hear her”