Mother Tongue

In several key moments of “Mother Tongue,” Tan uses anaphora to increase the intensity and emotional weight of her arguments. By repeating the initial phrasing of successive sentences, Tan builds both her argument and its impact on the reader.

The first instance of anaphora occurs in the first two paragraphs, which establish Tan’s stance toward her argument. Tan repeats the phrase “I am” to describe both what she is not (“a scholar of English or literature”) and what she is: “a writer,” “someone who has always loved language” and is “fascinated by language” (7). This positions Tan as the subject of the essay and develops Tan’s ideas about what it means to be a writer. This is a critical moment in establishing how the reader interprets Tan’s subsequent arguments; by repeating “I am,” Tan develops a sense of ethos, establishing her credibility as a writer and asking the reader to not worry about whether she is a scholar of the English language.

A second important instance when Tan uses anaphora to develop the intensity of her argument occurs in the third section of the essay, where Tan uses a series of “why” statements to push the reader to think about other limitations of the widespread belief in the necessary formality of English.