Language Is an Identity but also a Communication Tool

Response Paper of "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

3 September 2018

In her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldứa speaks up as a Chicano, a woman, for herself and her fellows, about the linguistic and identity-related struggles they have been through these years and centuries. She, as a person who speaks eight languages, has suffered from censures from both Anglo English speakers and Spanish speaker for her multilingual accents or ways of expression. Moreover, her speaking has also been restrained for being a female in her culture. She and her fellows have gone through a period of tough time when their self-identities are diminishing for the linguistic attacks. When they had their published literature and arts, and also a name, an identity, to represent their culture and their own languages, their self-awareness of their identities as distinct people was woken. At the same time, Anzaldứa has always been trying to revolt against these restraints to speak in her way, as her will.

Anzaldứa’s linguistic wild tongue is reflected on her later bilingual expression in the essay. Language is indeed a symbol of culture, however, it is also a tool for communication. Anzaldứa’s way of bilingual express is very unfriendly to those who neither know any Spanish nor speak English as their first languages. We are all educated to use the so-call “standard languages,” because we need to better express ourselves to more people as well as better to understand others. Anzaldứa apparently just simply neglects this fact being too emotional on the proclamation for her cultural identity and on unleashing her abhorrence of the dominant culture.

I do have some similar experiences as Gloria. In China, especially the south, we have more than four or five languages or dialects. For political reasons, we call them “Chinese” as a whole, but usually, they don’t share exactly the same writing characters, neither do they pronounce those characters in any similar way. People from one area of China can always consider others who are from another part speaking a foreign language. We use Mandarin for modern education and official communications. Some of my schoolmates who speak Cantonese as home tongue may have terrible accents in Mandarin, and they may fear to speak to Mandarin speakers, which is quite the same as what is shown in the essay that they are afraid of censures. Also, some Cantonese speakers may have their local accents on both Cantonese and Mandarin, which is similar to some Chicanos.

It will never be right to judge others accents, as censuring an accent can be a slander to a culture. However, it is also our responsibilities to try to use another language in a better way. I speak Cantonese as my home tongue, Hakka as my mother’s dialects, and I also speak Mandarin with hardly any accent, and trying to speak English in a more native way. I keep my languages, and I held my own culture as treasures. Living in a city near HongKong, our culture is also influenced by some western cultures, so I speak the mix of these four languages to my families, but I still show my respect to “standard languages” as communication tools when I need them.