Part 1
Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” is a personal essay that goes out of its way to propose the argument of her mother’s English dialect and how it has impacted Tan’s life. This essay was published in The Threepenny Review in the Autumn of 1990, for context’s sake, this is a literary magazine that was much more popular back in the 90s as it was first established within the 80s. Tan, being a writer and a literate herself establishes this within the beginning of her essay stating how although a writer of the English language, she herself has a multitude of versions of English (Page 1) which dwells straight into her topic of reason, her mother. What stands out at the beginning of her work is the fact of how hooked readers can become, not to mention how Tan uses it to introduce her topic swiftly. Going forward she elaborates using her experience in speech, acknowledging how distinct it felt, and that was due to her mother being a part of the crowd and how different it felt having “proper” English being spoken to her. From here on Tan essentially discusses her personal childhood stories about her mother ranging from calling stockbrokers to having to speak with her doctor in order for her mother to obtain medical records which many readers may sympathize with and that’s thanks to Tan’s rhetorical uses within her essay.
Uses logos to express that society stereotypes often, in “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan always has self-reflection with her own English skills. Whenever she looks back on her flaws and strengths, she refers to facts and personal experiences. As Amy Tan states, in an article, she found that Asian-American students do significantly better on Math exams than English ones. Additionally, when Amy Tan considered her professors pushing her toward the math and science field while she pursued an English major.
Uses a phone call with a stockbroker for her mother Pathos, in an essay published in The Threepenny Review, author Amy Tan writes “Mother Tongue” which dwells into the stories Tan went through alongside her mother growing up. One of the stories she gives is about covering for her mother by making a phone call with a stockbroker in New York and imitating her mother to get answers about her payments. This story appeals to the idea of pathos due to the fact many readers who come from similar experiences in covering for their parents that don’t speak “proper” English may have done phone calls for them, although most definitely not have done to the extent of booking a trip across the country to yell.
Use of personal experiences Ethos, In the text “Mother Tongue” which is a personal essay written by Amy Tan, the author’s background gives values of credibility to the text through the adaptation of Rhetorical choice of ethos Throughout the text. The author spoke about her opinion through her personal experience. The use of her past shows signs of ethos because the reader has no say in whether her opinions are wrong or right, therefore they will trust her content since she uses Herself as an example.
Part 2/3 I made a Meme for my part 2 assignment
Rhetorical Analysis
Michael Torres
English 110
The argument for my meme is that when I was younger, I couldn’t speak Spanish unlike other kids when other young kids could naturally, but as I got older my mom taught me how to speak Spanish little by little. But their Hispanic kids don’t even get to learn how to speak Spanish. My intended audience is Hispanic kids who were able to learn Spanish, and my genre is the use of a Meme. I chose the argument because some kids who grow up in Hispanic households don’t get to learn Spanish unlike others and I was one of those kids who was able to learn Spanish from my mom. I chose the intended audience because my argument is based on using and learning Spanish. I chose to use a Meme for the genre because it was simple and easy to use for this Rhetorical analysis, also I think I’m not good at writing rhetorical texts. The first Rhetorical strategy I used was Pathos, I used a meme because I know people would have found the meme to be funny and that the use of pathos would be applied. The use of pathos in my meme is shown to be funny because in my meme drake is making a disgusted facial expression about me not knowing how to speak Spanish as a child, and in the second half of the meme drake got happy an expression for me learning how to speak Spanish as I grew up. The meme is supposed to be funny so that is why the use of pathos is applied. The second Rhetorical strategy I used in my meme is Ethos, I purposely used Ethos because I wanted to give credit to my mother for teaching me Spanish, that why I used Ethos so I can give credit to my mom.
