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Sample Essay
The Assignment
Drawing on class discussions of Tan's and Baldwin's essays in
addition to your own views and personal experiences, write an
essay of approximately 750-1000 words, wherein you discuss the
role(s) of language (both positive and negative) in our world
and its relationship to identity (individual and community). In
other words, explore the power and purpose of language.
*Note: The topic sentence of each body paragraph is underlined.
Binding Ties, Song of Self: The Purpose and
Power of Language
1. If you are fluent in a language, you probably
don't give much thought to your ability to interact with others,
to understand and be understood in your world. But what would
happen if you lost your voice? Or if suddenly the language skills
you have, that is your ability to read, write, and speak, were
no longer sufficient to allow you to understand television and
newspapers or to tell a waitress what you wanted to eat or a doctor
what was wrong with you? What if your language actually caused
others to discriminate against you? I suspect your perception
of the importance of language would undergo a pronounced change.
2. Recently, I had an experience with language deprivation when
I had laryngitis. The three days I was without my voice were frustrating,
interminable, and evidence of the power and purpose of language.
Early in her essay, "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan discusses
this power of language. She writes, "it can evoke an emotion,
a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth" (26).
Though at times, I could whisper, people had difficulty hearing
and understanding me, and I couldn't write my thoughts down quickly
enough to meaningfully converse with others. In short, my lack
of voice impaired my ability to express myself and to communicate
and indeed participate in my world. Moreover, language, the combination of specific words in a
particular order, not only empowers individuals to participate
as members of a designated community, it is also a fundamental
key in enabling individuals to establish and define the dimensions
of their identity.
3. Language is the impetus that empowers
individuals to forge ties that bind into a community, thus giving
them personal, social, or cultural identification. In his
essay, "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What
Is," James Baldwin defines language by pointing to its unparalleled
power. He writes, "language is also a political instrument,
means and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key
to identity:" (129). Baldwin points to the experience of
the African slaves. Without a common language, they were unable
to communicate with one another, but they evolved a language,
which they used to articulate their common experience and form
their own community. Indeed, the African Americans evolved a dialect
of English that enabled them to describe their reality and establish
their own distinct cultural identity. Though I take issue with
Baldwin's definition of language (he contends that a dialect is
actually a distinct language), I wholly concur with his perception
of its purpose and power. Without language, the slaves were unable
to articulate their reality. Without language, the slaves were
alienated from the world in which they were forced to live.
4. Indeed, just as language can be the glue that binds individuals
into a community, language is a double-edged sword that also bears
the power to alienate an individual from a community or at the
very least identify him or her as an outsider. One such example
that comes to mind is Kim, a little girl who was in my third grade
class. Kim was Korean, and she didn't speak much English. I doubt
she knew or understood more than a handful of English words. Day
after day, Kim sat in our class, not understanding what the teacher
was saying. Kim was in our little community of third graders,
but she wasn't really a part of it. Though the other children
weren't particularly cruel to her, neither did they include her.
Why? They didn't know how to communicate with her. As a child,
I didn't think about it, but certainly this little eight year
old child was overwhelmed by the incomprehensible barrage of English
words being hurled at her, was frustrated that she had something
to say but had no voice with which to do so, and was lonely because
she was isolated from those who shared a common language.
5. Not only can language articulate a simple truth, one's
command of it demonstrates a simple truth: without language, one
is voiceless, with imperfect language, one is perceived as imperfect,
and with standard language, one is superior, at least from the
perspective of those who possess standard command of the language.
Tan also examines this relationship of language to acceptance
in a dominant community in "Mother Tongue." She goes
on to give countless examples of this truth in action when she
writes about how her mother was treated, "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 hear her" (28). Why did
they treat Mrs. Tan in such a disrespectful manner? For the sole
reason that she spoke a simple, non-native variation of English,
derogatorily referred to as "broken" or "fragmented"
English. Indeed, this is the power of language: without standard
language skills, one is identified as an outsider, often inaccurately
perceived and unfairly discriminated against.
6. Yet identification with and acceptance in a community is not
the only result of language acquisition. Baldwin and Tan both
describe an unbreakable link between language and self-individuation.
In other words, your experience with language shapes your sense
of self-identity. Tan writes of the different Englishes she
uses. Chiefly, she distinguishes between the simple form of English
she speaks with her family and more complex version of the language
she uses in her professional life. Though there was a time when
Tan was embarrassed by her mother's English, she now sees things
from a different perspective. She writes, "my mother's English
is perfectly clear . . . 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" (27). The language
that she once perceived as inferior, sub-standard, or broken,
she now views as intimate, special, and representative of her
mother's beautiful and insightful expression of herself and view
of the world, which Mrs. Tan, in turn, taught her daughter. Her
point is well taken.
7. Even if we are not multilingual, do we not all have a different
mother tongue taught to us as children which has unconsciously
shaped the way we see ourselves and our world? And do we not
all speak our own different Englishes, calling upon them as the
occasion and audience direct? Certainly, the language I call upon
in a meeting with the president of the university differs from
the language that I use with my colleagues, which is different
from the language I speak with my friends or family, which differs
from the language I use with my godchildren. It may be a matter
of word choice or intonation or slang or content or purpose, but
each is a different part of myself and my world.
8. Language is many things: the arrangement
of words in a particular order, uttered in a certain way, denoting
certain meaning, a political instrument which evokes images and
emotion. Certainly, all of this is a description of the purpose
and function of language. But at its most fundamental, language
is quite simply the expression of self and the ability to share
that expression with others. Baldwin and Tan both highlight the
importance of language: to be without language is to be voiceless,
and to be voiceless is to silence the song of the self.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then
Tell Me, What is?"
Across Cultures. Eds. Sheena
Gillespie and Robert Singleton. Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
1999. 128-131.
Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Across Cultures.
Eds. Sheena Gillespie and Robert Singleton.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999.
26-31.
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