She supports this argument by using rhetorical statements like, “I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts”. Amy Tan also felt that standardized tests could not determine any one person’s intelligence. For example, her mother did not speak perfect English, but it was the point her mother was trying to make or get across are what’s important. She says, “it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or simple truth.” One of the many main points of her story was that words are more than just words, sometimes you have to look deeper and beyond the words. In the essay “Mother Tongue,” Tan talks about the power of language.
She no longer saw anything wrong with her mother’s tongue, instead she found comfort, it had become a part of her family.
The language formed a barrier between Tan and her mother but as Tan grew older she started to embrace this “broken” English, because it reminded her of home. So with that being said Tan would have to sometimes pretend to be her mother, and she would call people to yell at them while her mother stood behind her telling her what to say. She said that the people “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”. Tan said that when her and her mother would go stores people would treat them differently because they did not speak “proper” English. When Tan was younger, she was always embarrassed of the way her mother spoke because it didn’t sound right or sounded weird and other people who were not familiar with the way she spoke and found it very difficult to understand her. Throughout the story, she explains her relationship with her mother, who speaks “broken” English, and how the way she perceives language has changed due to her mother. In “Mother Tongue”, Tan describes the many situations where the language that she was taught impacted her life.
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