Language Conflict

Your mother tongue is your native language; it is the language you obtain by your surroundings growing up. Learning a language soon after your mother tongue can cause confusion since you are switching between speaking the languages. Dominican author, Julia Alvarez, in her autobiography My English, uses her personal experience, detailed sentences, and certain vocabulary to make her audience understand the struggle she faced from trying to understand and speak English even though it conflicted with her mother tongue, Spanish. This autobiography could be intended for people who have gone through a similar experience to Alvarez with struggling to learn a language while at the same time not wanting to reject your mother tongue. Since she uses Spanish in her writing, it could also be directed to those of hispanic descent. Alvarez was born in New York but raised in the Dominican Republic where she went to a school that taught in English; she however was forced to move back to New York when she was ten years old because of her father’s rebellious actions against dictator Raphael Trujillo. 

Julia Alvarez uses pathos as her rhetorical strategy to bring her point across to the audience. Pathos appeals to emotions; it is the vivid descriptions, emotional tones, and detailed stories that makes the reader feel as if they were living through it. Using pathos helps the reader imagine what the author felt while going through the series of events that they were writing about.  She explains that living in the Dominican Republic and her native tongue being Spanish made it harder to learn English. Her choice of words and detailed phrases give us a view into her emotions during her experiences; she makes us understand and almost puts us in her shoes as she tells her story. By writing about multiple experiences in her life, Alvarez makes it clear that she struggled with English and made it seem like it was almost a barrier pushing her away from her Spanish. 

Alvarez starts by speaking about how her family only spoke Spanish at home until she and her siblings were sent to a school that taught in English. In every language however, there are different ways they are spoken. In some Spanish speaking areas people speak with a lisp, others speak formally, and some speak with slang words, usually lower class maids and workers. Although many people like calling the maid’s way of speaking “bad Spanish”, it was the way they expressed themselves. Alvarez wrote that since the children, including her, were around the maids often, they picked up that “bad Spanish.” She explains that her parents would correct her for using that type of Spanish. This leads on to her writing about how she perceived English as “… not a different language but just another harder version of Spanish.” (Alvarez 115) To her at first, English was attached to serious, important, and urgent topics. She states many phrases that tell us that her parents would speak English when they wanted to talk about issues that they didn’t want her to comprehend: phrases such as, “Mami and papi used to speak it when they had a secret they wanted to keep from us children.” (Alvarez 114) and “Say it in English so the children won’t understand.” (Alvarez 115) Your mother tongue is like a comfort language, you use it to reflect on many things throughout your life. Alvarez used Spanish as a way to better understand when she was just learning English. She says “Whenever she (referring to her mother) spoke that gibberish English, I translated the general content by watching the Spanish expressions on her face” (Alvarez 115) meaning that even when she couldn’t understand the words her mother was saying, she used the way facial expressions that her mom would use while speaking spanish to comprehend the gist of the subject at hand. 

English was an important language in Alvarez’s household; to her mom it meant an opportunity to study in the states like she and her brothers did. Alvarez, although confused at times, understood the importance of English to her mother because it also meant breaking the chain of only males in the family going to the states: “Why my parents didn’t educate us in our native language… I don’t know. Part of it was that Mami’s family had a tradition of sending the boys to the States to boarding school and college, she had been one of the first girls to be allowed to join her brothers.” (Alvarez 116) It is important to note that in old hispanic culture, gender roles existed where the men got to be educated and work while the women usually stayed at home and weren’t educated past high school. Therefore, being a woman and getting the opportunity to study was a big deal and was highly appreciated. 

As she continues writing, she shares that she was told time and time again to speak English rather than Spanish. She would speak a mix up of the two due to the confusion of wanting to speak both languages. Whenever she would accidentally say a word in Spanish she would instantly get corrected by her teacher or family and it would cause her great embarrassment. She grew to be ashamed of her Spanish for a while and thought of English as superior. She uses the phrase “My native tongue was not as good as English, as if words like columpio were illegal immigrants trying to cross a border into another language” (Alvarez117); the comparison of the columpio being like an illegal immigrant makes the writing more interesting and shows how passionate she was in writing how she felt. She eventually began to get better at speaking English and she shows her excitement in her writing: she states “Soon I was talking up an English storm” (Alvarez 117), showing that she was becoming more comfortable with speaking English. 

Alvarez writes about moving back to New York and being amazed that everyone spoke English. Finally she describes her moment of realization that people in New York speaking English did not make them superior nor smarter, rather it was normal because it was their mother tongue. Her experience and relationship with English became better as time went on and she expresses how she became interested in writing because of her sixth grade teacher. Her teacher would teach the class almost as a creative writing course by giving her interesting and fun writing prompts. Alvarez says that “Supposing, just supposing… My mind would take off, soaring into possibilities…” (Alvarez 119), when she talks about how she felt when she was given a prompt. It took her some time but after a while she no longer felt like a foreigner to English, she had finally gained the confidence and comfortability with the language.In her autobiography My English, Julia Alvarez shares her personal story on the struggle to learn English and becoming comfortable with the language. Alvarez uses pathos, detailed sentences, experiences in her life, and includes Spanish to appeal to her audience. Alvarez’s writing shows emotion vividly. Her tone throughout the writing changes based on different stories she speaks about. She describes her experiences in such a detailed way that makes the reader truly understand her feelings.

Cover Letter

I chose to analyze Julia Alvarez’s My English. My intended audience is aimed towards people who want to understand the strategy behind Julia Alvarez’s writing in an easy way. I used easy vocabulary to appeal to my audience and make it easier to understand. I also used many details to clearly explain what I was trying to say. There are many terms that helped me write this essay. Purpose, or why the author is writing, was an important term because it set the foundation for the assignment. Rhetorical strategies (logos, ethos, pathos) are what I had to use to identify how the author chose to write to get their point across. The aimed audience of a writing is significant because it can explain why the author wrote like they did.

When I was writing my rhetorical analysis I had to really think about the purpose of the author’s writing; I had to find the purpose for the author writing the piece. I learned how to analyze a reading and explain which rhetorical strategies were used to get the point across. Besides that I had to thoroughly analyze the rhetorical appeals they used. I feel like this paper helped me become better at writing in MLA format. It also pushed me to improve on my citing. Before this paper, I didn’t really feel comfortable with citing so I’m glad this paper required quite a bit of quoting from the reading. This paper made me feel more confident about writing longer papers because I like writing but I usually end up getting a huge case of writer’s block, usually around 3 pages into a paper. However, while writing this paper, I felt interested to keep writing because I had to analyze the whole reading. 

Writing this paper helped me recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations and explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Since I had to analyze the reading and identify the rhetorical strategies of it, it made me learn more about the rhetorical appeals. Analyzing the reading was a bit hard because I had to keep on rereading to make sure that I was understanding what the author was trying to say. Writing this paper helped me develop strategies for reading and revising too. I realized that reading the passage once was not enough to fully understand it, so now I know that I should read it at least three times to make sure I acknowledge the purpose of the reading. As for revising, I found myself changing so many words and sentences in my paper because I didn’t think they sounded right. I used to hate changing stuff in my essays and paper because it made me feel as if I was changing my point or removing something important. However, now I realize that it’s normal to remove the unnecessary parts and or change your paper because it helps improve it with your new and better ideas.