Linguistic Terrorism in Gloria Anzaldua’s How to Tame a Wild Tongue and Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue

Linguistic terrorism is becoming common practice, and its main victims are the individual who is not natives of a given region. For them to comfortably enjoy the resources offered in the new home that they are now living in, practices that they have lived with and are not common to the place they now stay are neglected. This is essential for them to fit comfortably in, they also do this to avoid discrimination. Linguistic terrorism also takes the form where politically motivated motives come in with political agendas that are meant to manipulate people towards a given opinion. However important it is to adopt new lingual practices of one’s new home, linguistic terrorism is harmful in the effect that an individual is at risk of neglecting their root cultural practices in the aim of acceptance and assimilation by the new society.

In Gloria Anzaldua’s How to Tame a Wild Tongue, she explains scenarios why people abandon their native tongue to cope with the new conditions of the new environment they are living in. She has a strong dislike for these practices for they lead to language terrorism. People are of the opinion that for them to be accepted in a new setting is that they should copy every behavior of the new hosts while shunning away every practice that is their own.

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The adoption of new practices involves changing of accents, the obvious indicator showing one is different. This however is misinformed because by such behaviors lead to identity loss of a person. When and individual cannot be pegged to a specific identity, then the efforts they make to be accepted by society are in vain. Anzaldua gives examples of Mexicans living in America by saying that they should avoid trying to be identified as Americans for they will never be, but should accept their Hipic lifestyle, thus avoiding linguistic terrorism.

Mother Tongue by Amy Tan states reality through the fact that as individuals we speak different languages, and these differences that we portray by the way we speak categorizes each and every one of us. Language has a dynamic state, and it varies dependent on where and how one is brought up. We have the author; Tan brought up by an immigrant family and by extension will influence the language she adopts. Different settings will use different language to convey the same message, this is brought about by word placement. Language terrorism will arise because distortion lingual principles are not considered through the various dialects. Tan interchangeably uses different language when it comes to addressing her mother and different when conversing with other people.

Having categories of how people speak is wrong, this is the main cause of language terrorism and should be avoided. What is most important is to get the meaning of message being delivered without taking into consideration what language category one belongs to. The judgment of information should be based on content and not delivery means.

In conclusion, language has a huge effect in the way we lead our lives. It should, therefore, be given the proper attention it deserves. Language should be an identifier to an individual identity and should not be distorted to fit a different category. That which is most important is that language serves it the purpose of communication and should not be a divisive factor among people.

Works Cited

1. Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue?” Borderland/ La Frontera: The New Mestizo. Second Edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987. 217. Print.
2. Bloom, Harold. Amy Tan. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009. Internet resource.

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