Rhetorical Devices In How To Tame A Wild Tongue

Doctors are infamous for their unreadable writing; Richard Selzer is not one of those doctors. A talented surgeon, Selzer has garnered critical acclaim for his captivating operating room tales, and rightfully so. A perfect exhibition of this is The Knife, a detailed illustration of a surgery. What may seem like an uninteresting event is made mesmerizing by Selzer’s magnificent account of the human body and the meticulousness that goes into repairing it. The rhetorical appeals, tone, and figurative language that Selzer uses throughout The Knife provide the reader with a vivid description of the sacred process of surgery.

The story “Never Mary a Mexican” was about a woman named Clemencia who remembers her family, her family culture and her affair with a married man. She describes what it’s like to be out of place and how she’s “…amphibious. I’m person who doesn’t belong to any class” (Cisneros, pg. 111). In the beginning of the story, Clemencia explicitly describes her parent’s families. She explains how her mother’s family was poor, yet humble.

What makes a piece of writing effective? A piece of writing includes many things that make it effective, such as the style that appeals to the reader and rhetorical devices used in the writing that make it much more interesting. In this piece of writing titled “ How to tame a wild tongue “ includes many of these things. Even starting with the title it makes me curious as to what the piece will be about. There are two devices Anzaldua uses effectively in her essay which are anecdotes and parallel structure.

Written by Gloria Anzaldua, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, is an opinion easy , a retrospection of her past and a story about identity and recognition of a wild tongue. The following is a rhetorical analysis and personal response of this easy . My analysis will be divided into 4 separate parts including intended audience, main claim, purpose and situation. (a) Intended audience : The first thing that anyone who even skims through this easy would notice is Anzaldua’s multi-lingual language use.

Brian Doyle in his text Joyas Voladoras he uses vivid and clear imagery, repetition, comparison, syntax and effortless diction to show his purpose which is it does not matter the size of a heart but its ability to live life to its fullest and hopeful that each day will be good. In the first paragraph he repeats the words “ A hummingbird’s heart is,” this shows the reader how the hummingbird’s heart is. “ not soon” this is in the second paragraph and it describes the urgency of the want. “You” is repeated to show the timeline and how it is similar to the human life. “So much held in heart in a,” this is used to describe all the little precious moments at the end of our lives.

My Rhetorical Analysis Language is a part one’s identity and culture, which allows one to communicate with those of the same group, although when spoken to someone of another group, it can cause a language barrier or miscommunication in many different ways. In Gloria Anzaldua’s article, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, which was taken from her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she is trying to inform her readers that her language is what defines her. She began to mention how she was being criticized by both English and Spanish Speakers, although they both make up who she is as a person. Then, she gave convincing personal experiences about how it was to be a Chicana and their different types of languages. Moreover, despite the fact that her language was considered illegitimate, Anzaldua made it clear that she cannot get rid of it until the day she dies, or as she states (on page 26) “Wild tongues can’t be, they can only be cut out.”

Rhetorical Analysis on Anzaldua’s How to Tame a Wild Tongue The passage How to Tame a Wild Tongue is a very defensive and straightforward argumentative essay which defends her language and the people who speak it against the discrimination that the author herself has experienced first hand (Ethos). From this text we can infer that the author is most likely from hispanic descent as she is speaking spanish a lot of the time throughout the text. This text mainly speaks about the discrimination many Mexican-Americans suffer because they are spanish speaking.

The ability to divide our attention during cognitively demanding tasks and the allure of technology creates a delicate balancing act that can at times have grave consequences. On September 22, 2006 in Utah, Reggie Shaw placed the fates of James Furfaro and Keith O’Dell, as well as his own upon this deadly scale. Tragically, the lives of James and Keith were lost, and Reggie Shaw’s future would be forever altered by the events and decisions of that day (Richtel 16). In this modern age of technological marvels our attention is vied for in a constant conflict. Frequently in our lives or particularly in our jobs we are called upon to execute mentally demanding and at times dangerous tasks.

Stereotypes are “simplified and standardized conceptions or images invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group,” (Dictionary.com). They are often offensive and highly discriminatory. In The Myth of the Latin Woman by Judith Ortiz Cofer, Cofer denounces the American stereotypes of Latinas by establishing her credibility with personal experiences, manipulating the audience’s emotions, and employing imagery. Cofer begins her piece with the establishment of her credibility via ethos. She opens The Myth of the Latin Woman with a recollection, stating that “[I was] on a bus trip to London from Oxford University where I was earning graduate credits one summer,” (370).

Cofer addresses the cultural barriers and challenges that Latinos experience through emotional appeal, anecdotal imagery, parallelism and the use of effective periodic sentences. In her article, Cofer assesses the difficult cultural hurdles of Latin Americans with emotional appeal. She provides insight on her cultural barriers by first conveying the way she had to dress and her struggle, as it shows in this piece of text, “That morning I had organized… which to base my decision” (Cofer 5). This poignancy works to stress an agonizing feeling of uncertainty and restraint towards the author.

Rhetorical Precis #4: “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan Amy Tan’s purpose in her article “Mother Tongue” is to show the influence of her mother’s style of english. She also relates this to a more broad topic of the idea that there are many different types of english that people speak that are tailored to whoever they are speaking to. She begins this piece by stating plainly that she is not an english scholar. Instead of decreasing her credibility it actually increases it and paints this piece as a more personal set of observations rather than a bland overview of the entire language.

The Rhetorical Analysis of “The Myth of the Latin Woman” There are many examples of incidents happened because of cultural differences. Some of them are short, single events, while other follow a person or social group for decades. Professor Judith Cortiz Cofer describes the second example in her essay The Myth of the Latin Woman that was originally published in Glamour in 1992. The author focused on the stereotypical view of Latin women from the perspective of the personal experience as a Puerto Rican girl and woman in the USA. Cofer based her essay on examples from her own life and observations of the problem in a broader sense.

Often known as the Father of American Literature to many educated individuals, Ralph Waldo Emerson in his oration “The American Scholar” brilliantly provides a sublime example of how Emerson earned his title through the appliance of diction, syntax, allusions, and many other rhetorical devices and strategies. Indicated towards his highly educated audience, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Emerson introduces the idea that the common class and common concepts of everyday life are becoming the future of art and literature through purpose, credibility, and tone. As many great writers, Emerson does not simply tell about his idea, but instead uses rhetorical strategies to help show his central point, one such strategy being purpose. Being focused on informing his audience of the coming days, the use of purpose can be

1. Introduction Published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, The Bell Jar has aroused the interest of scholars all over the world. One of the most often discussed characteristics of The Bell Jar is its use of similes, metaphors, and symbols. Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath employs rhetorical devices to paint a vivid picture of its protagonist Esther. This essay will discuss how Sylvia Plath uses figurative language to represent Esther’s feelings of insanity, anxiety, and freedom.

Samuel Huntington’s article The Hispanic Challenge argues that Hispanics, specifically Mexicans, are not true American citizens. According to Huntington, Americans are people who believe in the American creed. However, he believes this creed is being threatened. For some time now, large influxes of Hispanic immigrants have been coming to the US and have brought their own culture with them. The writer of Speaking in Tongues, Gloria Anzaldua, believes that Hispanics have the right to hold onto their culture in America.