[a] Pages 75-86, Chapter 5: “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
[b] Anzaldúa opens with the story of her dentist, who tries to tame her wild tongue, and uses this to begin the explanation of how limiting someone’s tongue, their language, is a form of oppression, a form of violence and murder. She quotes Ray Gwyn Smith: “Who is to say that robbing a people of / its language is less violent than war?” (75).
One way that language is used violently is through the way that women and men are described. Anzaldúa remembers many words being used for girls who lied, gossiped, talked back, talked too much: “Ser habladora….halbar pa’ trás, repelar. Hocicona, repalona, chismosa….mal criada” (76). Additionally, Chicanas use the word nosotros, unlike Cubans and Puerto Ricans, which causes them to hide themselves, hide women, any time they use the plural. “Langauge is a male discourse,” Anzaldúa concludes (76).
Anzaldúa also explains quite a few of the languages that she speaks, listing many of them and explaining that she often speaks many of these languages among certain groups. For example, she speaks five of the eight she lists with her sisters (77-78). She describes the shame that many Chicanos feel becuase either their language isn’t English enough or Spanish enough, and how many Chicanos will be hostile to each other because of the language spoken, “vying to be the ‘real’ Chicanas, to speak like Chicanas. There is no one Chicano language, just as there is no one Chicano experience” (80).
Anzaldúa emphasizes the closeness of language, culture, and identity, explaining that talking badly about her language is a way to hurt her: “I am my language. Until I can take pride my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (81). She was able to find some validation of her language and culture through Chicano boooks and Mexican movies (82).
In addition to language (or perhaps, more aptly, concurrently and intertwined with language), is the issue of identity and acculturating. When Anzaldúa is asked by her mother who she is, Anzaldúa says her answer varies, including “soy mexicana, “soy Chicana,” or “so tejana,” or before those, Raza, which she feels more aptly includes her Indian heritage.
Because Chicanos do not acculturate fully into either Mexican or Anglo culture, they suffer economically. Anzaldúa notes that Chicanos are patient people, quietly “count[ing] the days the weeks the years the centuries the eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they’ve created, lie bleached” (86).
[c] I love this chapter, and I really love how she uses language. I’ve read these ten pages before, and had my Writing 121 students read it as well, and last quarter, an astute student noted how well her style was arguing what she was saying. I completely agree with her that language is used to enact violence, and that when one enacts violence upon someone’s language, one is enacting violence upon that person. I see a lot of connections to what happens in English: Black English Vernacular is not valued in many settings; rural and Southern vernaculars are equated with stupidity; it is believed by many that there should be one English and others are devalued if deviating from it; language is phallocentric and serves to hide women (man, mankind, the default pronoun he).
[d] Anzaldúa notes that the reglas de academia hold people back. How open should academic writing be to other languages? To other writing styles? Anzaldúa’s book is very successful (so far, at least) by mixing genres and languages; how much can academic writing expand to include more of this? What will be the effect? Can my freshmen composition students do this type of writing? Even if I want them to, do they want to? Does the university want them to? How can I show students that I value their language? How can I fight for the valuing of others’ languages?
[e] The devaluation of languages and of mixed languages comes because certain groups (white Anglo men) have institutional power and define what languages have value. Also, men have defined language because they control so many institutions (church, government, family), that language is often phallocentric. Because the dominant paradigm tells peopel their language is not valuable, is a sign of being less than human (or, in the very least, stupid), people often internalize this with shame of their own language, and then enact this with horizontal oppression, where, as in this chapter, people tell each other that they are not speaking like a Mexican, or like a Chicana, or like a North American.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: La Frontera. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999.
