Rhetorical Situation Worksheet

Your name: Noelcarlo Degante

Completing this worksheet may take more time than you think. It’s worth the time. The information you gather will help you later when writing up assignments. But more importantly, the process of addressing each of the questions below will slowly work to change how you read texts. Keep in mind that some answers will not be obvious or even observable in the text, and so you may have to do some critical thinking and, at times, even some online research. Use full sentences. Take as much space as you need.

Context & Exigence: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? What year is the text published? What is the exigence–that is, what motivating occasion/issue/concern prompted the writing? The motivating occasion could be a current or historical event, a crisis, pending legislation, a recently published alternative view, or another ongoing problem. 

The text is responding to the topic of immigrants assimilating in new countries, but more specifically the experience of Chinese immigrants living in America and how they way they speak effects them and their children. This text was published in 1990, a year after her most famous novel “The Joy Luck Club” was published. She was likely inspired to write more about her experiences following the success of her novel because it got her thinking about asian representation in literature and how she likely isn’t alone in the experiences she had growing up.

Author: Who is the author of this text?  What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue? 

Amy Tan is the author of Mother Tongue. She has a bachelors degree in English and a masters degree in linguistics. She has also written several other books such as “The Kitchen God’s Wife” and “The Moon Lady” but is especially known for her novel “The Joy Luck Club” that she released in 1989. She is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant so this issue means a lot to her.

Text: What can you find out about the publication?  What is the genre of the text (e.g., poem, personal essay, essay, news/academic article, blog, textbook chapter, etc.)? How do the conventions of that genre help determine the depth, complexity, and even appearance of the argument? What information about the publication or source (magazine, newspaper, advocacy Web site) helps explain the writer’s perspective or the structure and style of the argument?

Mother Tongue was first published in “The Threepenny Review” which is a magazine based in Berkeley, California. Mother Tongue is a personal essay based around her life and her experiences and how she believes it relates to others going through the same things she did. “Mother Tongue” is practically a literal title because the story revolves around her Mother and the way she speaks and how it has impacted Amy Tan growing up. The essay being written amongst other stories helps to show that the author intended to be relatable and its almost as if she is reaching out to others to tell them she’s been through what they have gone through.

Audience: Who is the author’s intended audience? What can you infer about the audience (think about beliefs and political association but also age, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, education, geographic location, religion, etc.)? Look for clues from the text (especially the original publication) to support your inference.

The author’s intended audience are readers of her books, her mother, and anyone who can share a similar experience to her’s. The audience can be anyone but I can infer that they are more likely to be Chinese/Asian, lower to middle class, liberal/progressive, and being more collectivist as opposed to individualistic.

Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?

The author is telling a story about her mother tongue and how the the “broken” English her mom spoke to her impacted her life. In doing so, she is trying to educate the reader on a possible explanation of the lack of asian representation in literature. This is because the story seems to build to this reveal.

Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take? 

Although asian representation in literature was an important part of the text, I believe that the main claim the author tries to communicate is that the way you speak and understand a language is not a true reflection of you as a person and should not be used to define you. Amy Tan uses her mother as an example to support the claim.

Evidence: How is the argument supported? Types of support include reasons and logical explanations as well as evidence. Types of evidence include anecdotes, examples, hypothetical situations, (expert) testimony, quotes, citing sources, statistics, charts/graphs, research the author or another source conducts, scientific or other facts, general knowledge, historical references, metaphors/analogies, etc. 

This argument is supported through the anecdotes told throughout the story. For one, her mother in the stockbroker story where although she spoke English in a “broken” manner, she understood more about stocks than most people. When they spoke she understood exactly what they meant. Another example was when Amy’s teachers tried to steer her towards math and science instead of writing because it looked like it wasn’t her strong suit. Also, despite not using statistics in the text, she used general knowledge to claim that lots of Chinese students go into engineering and that there are so few Asian Americans in creative writing programs because of people like her teacher’s steering them away from writing in favor math and science which they appeared to excel in.

Rhetorical Strategies: What aspects of this text stand out for you as a rhetorical reader? In other words, what do you observe about what the author strategically does (consciously or not) in hopes of appealing to their audience? List here as many observations as you can make about what the text does. 

To me, I think it’s the way the text is structured and using anecdotes that connect with each other to progress the story that appeals to the audience. First we are introduced to the author where she claims she is not a scholar of English or literature, she is just a writer. Next, we are introduced to her Mother in a story where Amy is talking in front of a crowd while using these sophisticated and long sentences with perfect English. Her mother is in this crowd listening to her daughter use English she has never used with her. Then she gives an example of the English she would use with her Mother, this “broken” English that was easy to understand but caused her Mom to not be treated seriously. Then more stories about a stockbroker who wouldn’t send her check and a hospital visit where they could not be bothered to help her find her CAT scans that would both be remedied by Amy using her perfect English to get people to take her Mother seriously. Amy then makes a realization that despite speaking perfect English, her understand of it has been affected by her Mother Tongue and that she struggles to score very highly in English achievement tests so it appears that she is far better in math and science. Therefore, her teachers try to steer her towards math and science and its get her to wonder if this has happened to everyone in similar circumstances. These generalizations and stories help to explain real world trends such as the majority of Asians choosing STEM fields for careers and asian representation in literature being low.

Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” The Threepenny Review, 1990, pp. 7–8.

Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?

I want to remember that regardless of differences, life puts people through very similar situations. I can relate to this text because I am the son of immigrant parents. I know full well that my mom, despite speaking that same “broken” English, fully understands the world around her. She obviously isn’t dumb and should be treated with the respect that anyone who speaks “unbroken” English is treated with.

When looking back on the semester I become aware of all the things that I learned and yet I struggle to pick out anything significant. Nothing I learned really blew my mind but I understand its importance and that if anything, at least my knowledge was expanded. Maybe I feel this way because of the conditions in which I was raised. I was born to immigrant parents as the third and last child. There was a time where the only language spoken in my household was Spanish but by the time I came around, I had a dad and two brothers who could speak English well enough to be able to avoid speaking Spanish. I would say that I had the privilege of choosing to speak Spanish but I had to whenever I wanted to talk to my Mom. She struggled tremendously to speak English and my dad is a classic story of an immigrant worker in America. So, it must stem from feeling that I have already seen the stories I was reading about through my parents’ experiences.

1. Examine how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users.

Linguistic standards are a double edged sword. In cases of code switching, understanding how to speak according to the situation you’re in can help you blend in and makes it easier to connect with others. I’m even doing it right now except in writing. Looking at the majority of the sentences in this essay and other essays I’ve written, it is clear that I am writing in a manner that is distinct from the way that I speak on a day-to-day basis in an effort to get a better grade. For example, in my Final Research Essay I wrote “In a similar vein to that, I would also like to discuss speaking with an accent.” Yes it looks good on paper but actually saying it out loud sounds, to be crass, stupid. To talk like this in real life is exhausting and awkward so using simpler words that most people understand helps me communicate. I feel that for this reason the most authentic-to-me essay I’ve written this semester was the Language and Literacy Narrative. This isn’t to say that people get away with being unable to communicate. Expecting a standard can harm those who struggle to use their language effectively. The expectation in America is to hear clear and concise English so anyone that deviates from that is discriminated against. People with stutters, accents, and especially people who speak English as a second language face difficulties by failing to meet an expectation.

2. Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.

Of all the texts we read in this class, my favorite one was Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue.” To me, she made the best use of her rhetorical situation to deliver her message. She used stories of her immigrant mother and the broken English her mother used to communicate with her and others to drive the flow of her essay. Texts like James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” used the audience he addressed to his advantage to make a case for classifying Black English as its own language. He made comparisons to England and how despite how small it is, it comprises lots of regions with their own accents that are revealing of a person’s upbringing. He draws a connection to show how those who speak Black English typically come from a similar upbringing and thus can be used as evidence to Black English being its own language.

3. Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.

Maybe what I said in the beginning was a lie and I did learn some things. I wasn’t the best student. As bad as it sounds, I often missed classes where we were supposed to peer review and whenever I made it to class, I was often unprepared. I spent most of those days working on the assignment that was supposed to be done by class time in class. Regardless of that, I believe that this bad habit ended up in something positive. I got a better understanding of what wasn’t working in my essays instead of depending on someone else to point out my mistakes. My ability to revise and edit using my own judgment improved drastically.

4. Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.

Reflecting on how other writers used rhetorical situations across different genres helped me when it was my turn to include them in my writing. To me, my best example of using this was early on in the semester when I had to write a Language and Literacy Narrative. I wrote about the language that was created between me and my friends and arrived at a conclusion of how language was vital in keeping a group of people together. The anecdote I told about post covid times and the scramble to make friends. I said “They began by shouting the original, then shortened, then sped up, then the rolled R variant, and then finally just a stream of air blown through their teeth.” when talking about how my friends took a sentence and converted it into something of our own. I began the conclusion of the essay by saying “To this day whenever we see each other in person not an hour can go by without someone saying one of the dumb words we created. It’s what connects us, it’s how we bond.” I’m proud of how I was able to connect my story to my belief of language being what allows people to bond.

5. Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.

I think I am misinterpreting this point, but I believe it either means using the internet as a resource or using it as a means to spread your work. To do most of the assignments in this class, we had to use a mix of texts that were printed out and handed to us and videos or texts on the internet. Especially with the last assignment, the research essay would have been impossible to complete without the help of the CUNY Library and its seemingly endless resources. Having the class meet up in the computer room to have a rundown on how to use it really helped when it was our time to do so. It is a tool that I will benefit from during my time at this college. I know that the Language and Literacy Narrative Essay did not require me to substantiate my claims of “Yes, people my age talk using slang, but this was different. This to me, however dumb it sounds, was witnessing the development of language firsthand.” but I still wonder if it would have been more believable to the person reading that essay that I truly believed what I was saying. In the future I won’t have to worry about feeling this way because now I have this resource at my disposal. If this point meant to talk about the WordPress site housed on CUNY Academic Commons, then I will say having some experience on using it was also helpful, especially since I will use it next semester also in my Writing for Engineering class. Overall, seeing these resources and learning how to use them make it easier for others to view my work in a way that shows I have respect for what I say.

When I finished writing this essay, it was the first time I felt that I had written an essay of college quality in my entire first year of college here at CCNY. It was difficult for me to complete the assignment because the prompt was really vague. I had to have full belief on what I thought was the right way to do the assignment and it paid off. Using the CCNY Library was an interesting part of the assignment because I was able to use articles that normally would be blocked to back up claims I made. I made the claim that your ability to use language to be able to convey your ideas to others decides how people perceive you and backed it up with research articles on children’s experiences with stutters, a video about someone’s struggles with accents and stutters, a story about a girl’s mother using broken english, and many other pieces of evidence and was able to treat them as equally valid. This essay was also the first time in a while that I had to create a bibliography so it was good practice for the future where it will be common to include them.

Throughout the semester, we have read several different texts each centered around the concept of language and literacy. We read stories like “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan where we heard about the immigrant English experience in America. We also read an article titled “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?” by James Baldwin that discusses how the same language can be used differently among different groups of people while revealing a lot about those people. Other articles and videos we watched showed us the concept of code-switching, the experiences of speaking with a stutter, and so much more. To me, each of these texts shared a common theme of how the way you used a language reflected on how people perceive you. It defines how people will treat you. I intend to showcase that regardless of what your true character may be, your ability to use language to convey your ideas to others could affect how people perceive you.

To start, I want to talk about people with stutters. People with stutters struggle to get their ideas out and it isn’t their fault, they are just unable to convey them and it is costly. In an article written by Abdulaziz Almudhi, an Associate Professor of Speech Language Pathology, titled “Investigating the beliefs and attitudes of teachers towards students who stutter” posits from the findings that teachers understood that children with stutters were not less intelligent than their peers who don’t. However, a quote from page 2 of the article states “Many studies have been done based on the attitudes and beliefs of teachers/educators on CWS. The majority of the research, unfortunately, has indicated that educators and peers are likely to have negative perceptions or associate negative personality traits towards CWS.” Almudhi on page 1 builds on this idea by saying “Children who stutter may be subjected to bullying – a global phenomenon (Winnaar, Arends & Beku, 2018) – and teasing (Mooney & Smith, 1995). Greene, Robles, Stout and Suvilaakso (2013) report that approximately 246 million individuals are annually exposed to some form of bullying. Bullying is considered as one of the most common reactions by peers towards CWS.”  What these two quotes show is that, although children with stutters aren’t any different intelligence wise, they are perceived negatively by both their teachers and peers. The only difference between the two being that their peers bully and tease them for it. As a result, they may feel isolated and become shy and then it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle where they are now perceived as shy. My point can be further illustrated in the paper “Stuttering in the Movies: Effects on Adolescents’ Perceptions of People who Stutter” written by Terrylandrea Miller in 2015 for their Master’s Thesis. The research conducted in this paper argued that a person’s perception of people with stutters can be affected by the media they consume and it was backed up by the data. I mention this because I want to include a quote from page 69 which states “Researchers conducting studies with preschoolers and school age children found that children as young as 3 years of age prefer the speech of fluent peers and puppets rather than dysfluent counterparts (Griffin & Leahy, 2007; Langevin, Packman, & Onslow, 2010).” It’s almost inherent to dislike/negatively perceive people with stutters. People prefer to talk and listen to people who “speak properly”. In the case of people who have stutters, their inability to convey their ideas in a way that most people find pleasant or practical causes them to be perceived negatively.

In a similar vein to that, I would also like to discuss speaking with an accent. People with accents are taken less seriously than those without. They are unwanted. A video titled “Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent | Safwat Saleem “ uploaded to the TED youtube channel addresses comments made on a video he created where it was made clear that because Safwats voice had an accent, it was undesirable. People said things like “Could you remake this without peanut butter in your mouth?” (2:40) and “Couldn’t follow because of the Indian accent” (2:52) They are treated as if it’s okay to be disrespectful to them. Surprisingly, credibility also takes a hit as seen by the research paper “Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility” by Shiri Lev-Ari and Boaz Keysar. One of the experiments they created tested if bits of trivia sounded less true if they were said by someone with an accent. Their general findings from the article say “When people listen to accented speech, the difficulty they encounter reduces ‘processing fluency.’ But instead of perceiving the statements as more difficult to understand, they perceive them as less truthful. Consequently, non-native speakers who have an accent are seen as less credible.” This study shows that even our own brains deceive us when it comes to our perception of people when using a language. They are untrustworthy by default because it is harder for us to understand them. They are seen as liars even if they have no malicious intent. Something as simple as an accent can be the difference between people seeing you as someone trustworthy or a liar.

To continue, I want to discuss immigrant English. I believe that the essay “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, an author of notable books such as “The Joy Luck Club”, would be vital in supporting my thesis. The essay, originally published in 1990, talks about Amy Tan and her mother and the language they communicate with. She calls the language her Mother Tongue because it’s how her mother speaks, a “broken” English that makes it easy for her mother to navigate a world entirely different from the one she was raised in. Of course, using this language has its downsides. In the essay, Amy Tan discusses a memory at a hospital in a quote which states “My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment, to find out about a benign brain tumor a CAT scan had revealed a month ago. She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. She said they did not seem to have any sympathy…. And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English – lo and behold – we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake.” The point of telling this story was to show that despite her mother’s best efforts to communicate to the doctors in English, all the doctors saw was an immigrant they could push aside. They didn’t have to pay attention to her or take her seriously because of the way she spoke. Even when it involved something as serious as a brain tumor they didn’t treat her like she was a human. It was only until someone, her daughter Amy Tan, who could speak perfect English came to represent her that they began to take her seriously. They even apologized for it which they wouldn’t have done had it just been her. Another situation happens like this with a stockbroker earlier in the essay. She states “You should know that my mother’s expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands. She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease–all kinds of things I can’t begin to understand.” and “One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small portfolio…. And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, ‘Why he don’t send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money.’ And then I said in perfect English, ‘Yes, I’m getting rather concerned. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived.’ Then she began to talk more loudly. ‘What he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?’” She makes it a point to show that her mother is very knowledgeable when it comes to the stock market. Her mother reads reports, listens, talks with her stockbroker but still ends up facing a situation where that stockbroker is trying to take her money. They don’t send the check because they believe that she is clueless. She is aware that in order to make them take her concerns seriously she has to use her daughter’s perfect English. It’s very obvious that Amy Tan is implying that if it wasn’t for her mothers fragmented English, the stockbroker would treat her differently.

Furthermore, code-switching is a topic I find interesting and believe is useful in illustrating the point I am trying to make. Code switching can be defined as switching between different languages or varieties of language to better communicate with people. Most people do it subconsciously. An example of it can be the way you speak to your parents vs the way you speak to your peers vs the way you speak at work. Everyone talks differently to better fit the circumstances of the situation. Courtney L. McCluney makes the same claim in the paper “To be, or not to be…Black: The effects of racial codeswitching on perceived professionalism in the workplace.” published in 2021 along with co authors Myles I. Durkee, Richard E. Smith II, Kathrina J. Robotham, and Serenity Sai-Lai Lee. Their paper has a quote which says “In Study 1, a significant main effect for racial codeswitching among men (Study 1a) and women (Study 1b) indicate that the codeswitching Black coworker was perceived as more professional than the non-codeswitching Black coworker.” The goal of their experiments was to see if codeswitching affected how professional a Black worker was perceived to be. It turns out that if a Black worker changed the way they spoke to a “white sounding voice”, both Black and White people would perceive them as more professional. If they talked the way they normally did, they would be seen as unprofessional. James Baldwin makes a similar point in his essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” written in 1979. He goes on to make a case that Black English should be considered its own language as it’s different enough and tells the story of those who speak it. One of the most important lines in that essay is when he humorously says “To open your mouth in England is (if I may use black English) to ‘put your business in the street’: You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future.” He means that because England comprises so many regions and so many regional accents, a person can tell a lot about you just by the way you speak. In general, he is making the claim that the way you speak says a lot about you. It ties in to the research paper because it shows that if you make the effort to sound professional (sound white), you will be perceived as such. People associate being professional as sounding white so anything diverging from that will be perceived otherwise. Therefore, being unable to alter your speech to sound professional will harm people’s perceptions of your professionalism.

Language itself is a tool that can be used to benefit people. It helps with forming connections with others and to create a sense of familiarity with one another. The way you speak and present yourself can shift people’s perceptions of you. However, it can also work to do the opposite. In the case of immigrants with accents or people with stutters, the inability to “talk normally” will cause people to take you less seriously. It will make them feel entitled to treat you with disrespect. If you are unable to codeswitch effectively, the way you want to be seen might be harder to achieve than if you were good at it. Overall, how capable you are of conveying what you want to say in a matter other people would understand shifts how they see you, regardless of who you really are.

Bibliography

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” The Threepenny Review, 1990, pp. 7–8.

Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” The New York Times, 29 July 1979. 

Saleem, Safwat. “Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent | Safwat Saleem” Youtube, uploaded by TED, 15 August 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4a0NvLTebw

Miller, Terrylandrea. “Stuttering in the Movies: Effects on Adolescents’ Perceptions of People Who Stutter.” Cedar, Spring 2015, cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1412&context=wwuet

Almudhi, Abdulaziz. “Investigating the Beliefs and Attitudes of Teachers towards Students Who Stutter.” South African Journal of Education, Aug. 2022, https://web-p-ebscohost-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?id=0&sid=f4bc8f4c-7cd0-442b-a6d6-5e0536c31f6d%40redis 

McCluney, Courtney L., et al. “To Be, or Not to Be…Black: The Effects of Racial Codeswitching on Perceived Professionalism in the Workplace.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Academic Press, 29 July 2021, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103121001025Lev-Ari, Shiri, and Boaz Keysar. “Why Don’t We Believe Non-Native Speakers? The Influence of Accent on Credibility.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Academic Press, 25 June 2010, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103110001459

When doing this project, I felt like I got the chance to connect more with my parents. There were some misconceptions that I had about how they were raised and what exactly their childhoods were like and by asking them questions about their culture I got the chance to clear some of them up. The lives they had in Mexico that I saw in my head were not the lives they really lived. I thought my dad had farmland but then he told me about the systems they had in place where people had to rent land in order to grow their crops. The space you had was what you could afford and I thought it was really eye-opening. I also thought my mom was raised to be a mom, not realizing that there wasn’t really much of a choice. There weren’t many job opportunities, especially in the village that both my parents are from. Women only had the option of being mothers. It’s a reminder on how much people’s lives can vary depending on where they are born, even if its something as small as a different borough or entire continents.

Me: “Okay Pa so do you know what I’m asking you to do? Did you understand?”

Dad: “Of course! Yes.”

Me: “Okay first question. Why do you speak English?”

Dad: “Look at it this way, it’s a way for a person like us…. To learn the language of the country where you live at gives you more opportunities. I had more opportunities to communicate at work with people and learn easier. If you speak English, you get more money and have higher value.”

Me: “What did you work as in Mexico?

Dad: “When I was young I used to help build houses. I was a helper. I cultivated corn, beans pumpkins, peanuts, sesame seeds, jamaica leaves using my own seeds on land that I rented. Rented? There’s a better word for it.”

*goes on a tangent about what jamaica leaves are called in English which my mom says is hibiscus flower*

Me: “What did you do here in America?

Dad: “I do a whole bunch of things. When I first got here I was a dishwasher. Then I was a stockboy at a Korean deli. You know, I put things on shelves. Then when I started learning English I became a busboy. As I learned I became a food runner and then a barback.

*goes on a tangent about what a barback does and how they help the bartender*

Then I became a waiter. Oh, put that I was a pizza man too somewhere between.

Me: ”Ok what do you do now?”

Dad: “I’m a food prepper.”

Me: “How about music? Did the music you listen to change at all?”

Dad: “Nope.”

Me: “It’s stayed the same since you were a kid right?

Dad: ”Yes.”

Me: “Ok, how about religion?”

Dad: “I’m a catholic. Hasn’t changed.”

Me: “Do you think you have the same faith now as you did then?

Dad: “Eh.”

Me: “What about food? You used to eat more culturally right?”

Dad; “Yes. Now you guys are spoiled. You eat from so many cultures, vietnamese, columbian, chinese….

*goes on to list as many cultures as he knew.”

I cook a lot of whatever. I am versatile when I cook.”

Me: “What was it like coming here?”

Dad: “I was 17 years old when I came here. I stayed until I was 24.”

Me: “And then you went back right?”

Dad: “I returned and I met your mom. I married her and then I came back with her when she was pregnant. Here she became your mom.”

Me: “Okay something boring. Did you ever wear any cultural clothing?”

Dad: “No. Nothing.”

Me: “Not even something like a sombrero?”

Dad: “Nope.”

At this point my Mom walks in, from here our conversation is in spanglish/spanish. I translated it with a lot of artistic liberty.

Me: “Mom how come you don’t speak english?”

Mom: “But why!? It’s not necessary.”

Me: “Oh wow.”

Dad: “She never had a need to. She doesn’t work. She doesn’t socialize with people who speak english. At home we speak Spanish to her. She doesn’t need English. Obviously she’s learning more now because we speak English around her. She knows more than what she used to. She didn’t need English like I did.”

Me: “True. Okay Mom why did you stop making the ofrenda?”

Mom: “Because I don’t know if I was making it right. There’s a way to make it and I don’t want to do it if it isn’t proper. Also there’s no space. You need a table or a corner to do it right.”

Me: “Did you make one when we were younger? I only remember a few times you made one.”

Mom: “No. I only started making them when your uncle passed away. It was only for two years that I made them. They took up space we don’t have so I stopped.”

Me: “Did you make them in Mexico?”

Mom: “No. My mom made them. She knows how to make them right.”

Me: “Ohh. Pa, what about culture? What is expected of you guys in Mexico?”

Dad: “Well, the Mexican mentality of the husband is to….”

Me: “Provide?”

Dad: “Yes! Provide. To provide everything for the home. For the family. The mom is in charge of the house, she is the one raising the baby, breastfeeding. It’s natural.”

Me: “Mom was raised to be a mother right? I mean she got married at 17 and flew to the US and became a mother.”

Dad: “Not really. It’s just expected to happen. It’s part of the culture. There aren’t a lot of career options. In Mexico she didn’t work, she stayed in the house with her parents.”

Me: “Okay well I think that’s all I need for now. If I need anything else I’ll ask you later. Thank you Pa.”

The culture we were raised in has a significant impact on the way we live our lives. You can take someone out of the culture they grew up in, but you can’t take the culture out of them. It shapes what they idealize, what they expect of others, the goals they set for themselves, what motivates them to keep going. It’s ingrained and impacts places that we wouldn’t expect. At the same time, taking someone out of the culture can cause changes that are present in the next generation. Their original culture becomes hidden as they try to assimilate to the new culture around them. Certain aspects go missing and may never return.

I don’t know when I made this realization, but one day it just hit me that my dad speaks English. It wasn’t the fact that he could speak English, it’s the fact that he could speak it extremely well. He had a fluency that surprised me. If there was an accent you could hear, it was very slight. The difference between my Dad speaking English and my Mom trying to speak was night and day. I don’t mean to be rude but you can tell my Mom is an immigrant when she talks in English. It is very broken but the good thing is that she has gotten a lot better at it over the years. What’s cool to me though is the reason that my dad can speak English well while my Mom can’t, can be tracked down to the culture my parents grew up in. 

There are different expectations on what you are supposed to do in life depending on your gender. The gender roles of Mexico are a lot more apparent than in America. The man is expected to provide while the woman is expected to create. I always liked this comparison, it’s not an original idea, but someone out there said that the man provides the house and the woman makes it a home. It’s cheesy but I think it’s true. In America, both people in a relationship are expected to share the responsibilities while in Mexico, the responsibilities are split depending on if you’re male or female. The dad has to work like a donkey to make sure the family has food to eat while the mom has to make that food, provide a safe environment for the kids, and to make sure they don’t go dumb by making sure they are educated. I wonder if Mexican culture allowed for people like my Mom to have goals/dreams of her own. Or did all she know was to become a mother? Was my Mom happy to leave everything she knew at 17 years old just to raise a family in a world completely foreign to her? If she was born here she had a real chance of getting a career and making a living on her own.

My dad is expected to work and do what he has to do to make sure his wife and kids have a home to sleep in and food to eat. He used to work at a job that paid less than minimum wage because he was an immigrant. To get a job that provided him with a living wage, he had to learn English. Landing a job at a restaurant where it was expected of him to know English or he would get fired was a surprisingly good motivator to become fluent in English. Knowing English is what gets you respect and provides you with opportunities previously kept from you. Learning English had no impact on his Spanish speaking. I could imagine losing touch of your native tongue could be a possibility, being away for so long while speaking a different language.

           In Mexico, family is the most important thing. Here in America, people are a lot more individualistic. It seems that living in America has affected my parents. They don’t have a desire to reach out to the cousins who live in America and those cousins don’t make the effort either. Considering the togetherness of Mexican culture, this is bizarre. 

          My family didn’t bring their culture to America. My dad never wore a sombrero and my mom never wore a traditional dress. When they came here they only brought the food and their language. The food I grew up with was a mix of Mexican and other dishes my dad saw at his work that he wanted to cook for us. The only traditions I knew were eating tamales during the holidays and the setting up of an ofrenda. The ofrenda only happened for two years of my life when it became relevant to my Mom. After that I never saw it again. I think I just made a realization that my culture and its traditions make a return whenever they feel they want to be closer with each other.

          Overall, I could see that there was a shift in culture between my generation and theirs. They grew up in a Mexican village with not much and were not involved with what would be considered traditional culture. What they brought when they came to America were their beliefs, food, and language. Over time Mexican culture was swapped out for American culture as it was necessary to their survival in this country. Despite being Mexican by blood, I won’t ever truly feel Mexican because of the changing cultures my parents experienced.

Writing this essay was pretty funny to me. I never thought that a made up language me and my friends made would end up being the topic of my essay for a College assignment. We were asked to think about language memories but I had no prominent language memories in my head. Yes I could have written about growing up in a bilingual household or seeing my mom’s attempts at speaking English but I felt my experiences weren’t as interesting as the stories I have read discussing similar things. I lacked the ability to make it sound interesting.

I thought that the topic of this essay was one of the weirdest topics I’ve ever been given. I even considered asking my teacher what they meant by a language memory. Do people really have those? Are they important enough to write whole essays about? I forgot to consider that an essay can be centered around an entirely mundane thing. In the end, I guess it ended up not being about something completely pointless, not to me at least.

Noelcarlo Degante 

Professor Lobell 

Freshman Composition 

3/4/24 

Post-Covid was a wild time. People were thrown back into society and forced to act as if nothing ever changed. After the initial awkwardness of not being around people slowly dissipated and people became more comfortable with each other, a scramble to make up for the time people had lost during quarantine started. Friend groups quickly formed, almost by force, and I just chilled with the people next to me. They weren’t what I would call actual friends, just classmates/acquaintances. It was by chance that I ended up finding my friend group. They already had connections for months at this point, but I somehow fit in well enough to be accepted by them. As we got to know each other, the idiocy started to show itself. It was the typical dumb things that friends do, insults, teasing, horseplay, etc. But the thing that stuck out to me was the language that started to form. Yes, people my age talk using slang, but this was different. This to me, however dumb it sounds, was witnessing the development of a language firsthand. It took maybe a week to see the first signs. “Hurd” was the word to first make its way into our vocabulary. Now, I don’t fully know its origins, but I think it might have started off as the “Heard” for when you try to express that you understood something. Over time however it became more of a sarcastic “Really?” Someone could be saying the most serious sentence about something they care about or telling us what’s been bothering them lately and if we wanted to make it seem ridiculous or just didn’t care about whatever they were saying, we would just reply with “Hurd?” and nothing else. It was always a joke in poor taste, but it was funny. It also had a dual meaning where it became an insult. We would say that someone “is a Hurd.” And if someone was too much of a “Hurd” or if they said “Hurd” way too many times they would be the “Hurdler.” It was stupid and complete nonsense but it’s what we did. We would take inside jokes and make them shorter so that we could tell them faster while still getting the message across. This would repeat until they were just words and eventually just noises. We became able to express huge ideas in something as simple as blowing air through our teeth.  

I wanted to take the time to isolate one specific case of this “Language” because to me, it’s the most interesting part of this whole thing. It is a little vulgar though. For some context, whenever anyone in the group did anything that went against the rest of us or something that wasn’t “cool” we would say word for word “I don’t f*ck with (blank) bro.” We did this with anyone’s name but for some reason mine had the best ring to it because it was used the most. It could be someone else messing up or going against the ideals of the group and they would still say it using my name. This became one of the inside jokes because regardless of the situation, it was always my fault. Evidently though it became too much of a hassle to say it in full, so they dropped the “bro” and shortened it to “I don’t f*ck with Noel.” Soon enough my friends began to say it faster and faster like it was a competition to get it out the fastest. They sped it up so much that it would make your mouth connect the words “I” and “don’t.” The words started to sound like the double R that you hear in Spanish. Funnily enough, I think that if you can’t roll your R’s yet, saying this would help you unlock the ability to. Time passed and the rolled R became the representation of the phrase because it was the most pronounced part. If you wanted to convey the message, you need not bother to utter a word at all, just roll your R’s and we would understand exactly what you were saying. The final step in its evolution all happened in one day and I remember it because we were walking under a bridge to go get some food after school ended. The echo of the bridge made it funnier to us when we said our usual dumb phrases and lo and behold, they started saying “I don’t f*ck with Noel bro.” It was this day where I got to truly witness all the steps of the phrase’s evolution. They began by shouting the original, then shortened, then sped up, then the rolled R variant, and then finally just a stream of air blown through their teeth. The best I can describe it as was the letter “F”, but it was distinct. Honestly, in the moment it kind of blew me away. The following days in school were just normal classes sprinkled with someone saying “fff” and holding in laughter like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Even now it’s cool to me to see a phrase that started off as a sentence that anyone could understand turn into a noise that only me and my friends knew the true meaning of. As embarrassing or ignorant as it may be, I feel like this brought me an understanding of how languages, or at the very least dialects, are formed. 

To this day whenever we see each other in person not an hour can go by without someone saying one of the dumb words we created. It’s what connects us, it’s how we bond. I don’t know how much of what I say is true but I kind of believe that if it wasn’t for this shared language between us, we wouldn’t have been friends for as long as we have.  I might not even have been friends with some of the people in the group. It helps whenever we have nothing to say. There’s almost never a moment of awkward silence when you can just break the tension with a dumb phrase or noise. When things get serious or vulnerable and we want to return to a sense of normalcy, using the language is the perfect tool to transition with. This language is a curse because it is immature and hard to get rid of but also a gift when used as a tool to bring us closer to each other. 

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