Professor Young
English 1100
08/31/2015
"How I speak is who I am"
1. Anzaldua describes the way in which a dentist "is cleaning her roots out" trying to cover a gap of her tooth. Scene that has such great meaning due to the fact that he is trying to take out her values by trying to cover and cut what he calls a wild tounge. A tounge that can not stay still or keep quiet a tounge that refuses to conform to what society is telling her.
2. Throughout the whole story Anzaldua goes back and forth from Spanish to English and English to Spansh and even throws in a lilttle of what it's called Chicano. She does it to make us feel how she feels, and even though it is coherent and it makes sense her purpose is to make us undertand how being forced to understand a lenguage that is not your lenguange can be distressing
3. Academic English can be defined as standard Spanish and Chicano Spanish can be described as nonstandard English or "slang". Both in Spanish and English there is a proper way you should speak to some due to norms of society (standard Spanish/ academic English) but there is also "Slang" or Chicano in Anzaldua's case. It's own lenguage/dialect that is spoken differently depending of where you are geographically, the people you surround yourself with and even who you are as an individual.
4. As I said before norms of sociaty tell us what we should and sould not do, and in our society depending the scenario most of the time "Academic English" is a indispensable tool that you have to be able to maneuver to be considered a "smart" character.
5. Some of the different types of English identities that I know and use are proper English, which is the way that I refer to adults and those who have authority over me. Slang, which is the way that I speak to most of my friends and how I express myself through social media, and broken English, which is the way I communicate with my mother, father and most of my family that speak both Spanish and English like me, using "spanglish" a combination of both lenguages and broken words.
6. Usually in a group of friends you tend to have inside jokes and secret codes, so that when you speak about something infront of others they do not understand what you are talking about. In my group of friends we use a very small amount of secret code words, we might have our own "insiders", like a phrase one of as said years ago and we still laugh about it but there is no real secret lenguange.
7. The way you speak should vary depending on where you are and who you are referring to. Usually when I am speaking to an authority figure or I am at a formal place I try to speak as proper as possible, weather it is to give a good impression or because it is what I am suppose to do. When I am with my friends or when I am on social media things tend to change a bit, the "slang" comes out and I tend to not really care about the proper way of speaking.
8. The lenguage you speak relates to who you are as an individual, what your character is and even the way you were raised due to the values that were given to you by your parents due to their lenguage. " I am my lenguage" a phrase I personally feel very identify with, well I am who I am and how I am because I was raised in Colombia by hispanic parents who believe in God and follow his values which have created my morals and is the plataform to the way I see the world and where I stand in it.
9. At the beginning Anzaldua starts her story by using a retorical situation with a dentist and an "infection" that he is trying to take out, a tounge that does not sit still, but at the end it is shown that the chicanos were not willing to give up their lenguage, to let that dentist tame that wild tounge.
10. The lenguage you speak has everything to do with who you are and how you see yourself and others. As I said before and just how Anzaldua said "I am my lenguage"; each lenguage you speak is a a key to a different world, to a different culture and to a different set of morals and values, things that determine who you are as a person.
11. Your identity is the center of your life, it is the plataform of all the things that root from you, it is how you and others see you and who you belive you are. To Anzaldua identity is very important, which is why she refuses to give up her lenguage. Because it is taking away her lenguage is taking away who she is "if a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tounge, she also has a low estimation of me" pg5.
"I have never seen anything as strong or stubborn, he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tounge, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down?."
"Wild tounges can't be tamed, they can only be cut out."
"Having a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada"
Cited Work
Anzaldua, Gloria "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" Teaching Developmental Writing. Ed. Susan Naomi Bernstein Fourth ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's 2013. 245-255. Print
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