Mother Tongue

Forms of English are the central focus of this short essay. Tan alternates between describing her own challenges with formal English and articulating the beauty and importance of the English that her mother speaks. These conflicting strands are juxtaposed throughout the piece; rather than building an unresolvable tension, however, Tan successfully joins the two ideas together, arguing, to some extent, the importance of bringing all forms of English together to make successful writing.

While it seems clear that Tan is arguing that there is no “perfect” English, she does reference her own discomfort with identifying some forms of English, specifically that of her mother, as “‘broken’ or ‘fractured’” (7). This observation, which occurs a little before essay’s midpoint, is a critical aspect of Tan’s development of the tensions between different forms of English and how they are perceived by wider society. Tan wrestles with how she, a writer, can reconcile her own potential limitations due to her mother’s English with her belief that her mother’s language is “vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery” (7). One of the most powerful aspects of the essay, therefore, is not that Tan discusses the difference between perfect and broken English but her argument that no form of English is perfect or broken.