Rhetorical Situation Worksheet
Your name:
Jorge Garcia
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 many new immigrant and sons and daughters of immigrants. This was published in 1990 when immigrants rates were on the rise plus the rise of immigrant American born children were rising too.
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 this text. She studied in the San Diego State University. Her Investment in the issue is that she is trying to explain how people’s English doesn’t match the English most people understand and how that limits them in society.
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 us a short narrative. The short narrative genre helps to convey the appearance of the argument by getting to the point quick and easy not having any complexity is everyone that reads it can get to understand the morning.
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 is her mom and the people that don’t have the best English. I think that the intended audience is immigrant, children of immigrants. The original publishment was during a language symposium where people go to enhance language skills.
Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?
I think Amy Tan is trying to inform everyone about how her mom’s English is viewed as broken and how it limits her mother so she wrote this book in her own type of English so she could understand it. I know this because Amy tan says, “Because she expressed them imperfectly … even acted as if they did not hear her.” this shows what she is trying to convey about her “Mother’s Tongue” in a simpler way so her man could understand it.
Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take?
The main idea that the author is trying to make is that “Limited” English affects the life of many other immigrants coming into America even though they try their hardest society doesn’t perceive their English as normal English.
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.
There is a BuzzFeed.News article by Michelle No. She explains her struggle with her parents speaking broken english and having her to deal with it very similarly like Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue.”.
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.
One of the aspects is that the type of English written here can be read by most people, immigrant or not but at the same time it doesn’t lose the flare a book with more difficult words would have. She also influences the audience with the many relatable situations the audience would have experienced which pulls in the reader (myself included) unconsciously.
Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue” Under Western Eyes in the Threepenny Review, 1990 , pp. 315-320
Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?
What I want to remember about this text is English is such a language that portrays so many vast emotions with many details but can also stray away the ones that dotn have the ability to learn and speak it well.
