AMY TAN'S "MOTHER TONGUE", OPINION COLUMN

"Mother Tongue" is a reflective piece of Tan's experience with language, specifically touching on how it had shaped her view of society. For starters, one issue the author highlights is that of the stereotypes of non-native English speakers. Tan admits to the reader that her younger self was ashamed of her mother due to her "limited" English, as she processed it also as limited thinking. An example of this can be seen in the text, when the mother goes for the CAT-scan, and the doctors tell her they “lost” it and promised to retrieve it, but in a tone of insincerity. However, only when the mother asked her daughter (who, due to growing up in the U.S), of whom had adopted the standard English, to intervene that real action was made. Tan then states that “lo and behold, [the hospital] then made assurances that the CAT scan would be found,” and that a “conference call on Monday would be held.”

Could we say that this is a copybook example of discrimination against someone of a foreign culture? Yes, we most certainly could.

By dictionary definition, the word stereotype means, “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person”. Now, isn’t this an easy definition to understand? Well, of course it is. The people of today are living in a fast-paced world, and it seems that as a way of making sense of it all most people create rigid rules in order to know what a fire-fighter does all day, or what food should be eaten for breakfast. Stereotypes follow these same principles, as it is a close-minded way of categorizing people for fear of the chaos of growing from that label. On the other hand, it would be unfair not to understand why the doctor gave Tan’s mom the talk to the hand.

I can bet money that some people (like the doctors at Tan’s mother’s hospital) think that “it’s only an accent.” And yes, it is only an accent. This doctor, like the young Tan, had the preconceived idea that the mother was challenged. In his brain, he was comparing her English to that of the guys on the streets that refused or weren’t given a chance for an education. This arrogant way of viewing the world allowed even teachers (as Tan suggests) to sometimes steer the “broken English” kids away from writing and instead into math and science; therein, limiting their potential, and giving a green light to the mother’s doctor and Tan’s teacher to reject or judge regional and multicultural accents.  This is to say that the mother's “imperfect speech” is thought to translate into imperfect thoughts, of which one might guess had a negative effect on the relationship between the daughter and her mother as well.And, thanks to Stuart Hall and Terry Wogan from BBC, elocution lessons are on the rise and determining who is smart and dumb solely based on how they pronounce the sentence, “Today is a beautiful day for gardening.” I mean, how ridiculous is that? 

There is no doubt that this is racism, as the definition of this word is, “discrimination and antagonism directed against someone of an opposite race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” Can you see how similar the words “stereotype” and “racism” match? I certainly do. Sure, the words are written differently, but they describe prejudice behavior nonetheless. Come on guys; it's 2017.

Admittedly, as a society, we’ve gotten better at not being jerks. It’s been a painfully slow, but now women can vote, and foreign minorities can get the same goods as Johnny and Cheryl. But today we still see people mocking each other’s accents on television, and sometimes print. Unless this is stopped, more and more women and men with the same “unique” English as Tan’s mother will be undermined, and society will continue this unfair behavior until we’ll have accidently pulled a complete 180 to the era where segregation of races was absolutely jake.

References

., Hannah. "What’S The Big Deal About Mocking Someone’S Accent?." So Long As It's Words, 2013, https://solongasitswords.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/whats-the-big-deal-about-mocking-someones-accent/.

"Dictionary.Com - The World’S Favorite Online Dictionary!." Dictionary.Com, http://www.dictionary.com.