How to Tame a Wild Tongue Summary and Analysis: Gloria Anzaldua

Read our complete notes on the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua. Our notes cover How to Tame a Wild Tongue summary and analysis. For a further analysis of How to Tame a Wild Tongue follow the link or see below.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue Summary:

The essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua efforts to highlight the undesirable social outlook and attitude of the community toward the best way Chicano people speaks and the resulting harmful effects affecting the self-identity of the Chicano people dwelling around the borders. Anzaldua begins her essay using the hidden comparison of the way she speaks with her accent. She mentions her visit to a dentist who complaints that Anzaldua’s tongue is quite strong and tenacious. She seems frustrated while using words of doctor and starts thinking of the best way to tame a wild tongue and involves a conclusion that “wild tongue can't be tamed, it could simply be cut down”. The dentist, though, won't mention her accent or mean to, yet her reply to dentist words signifies that she gets complexes regarding her accents which, without doubt, makes her unconsciously aware of people’s thinking of her when she speaks.



Anzaldua moves ahead maintaining that her accent or the way she speaks is really a significant portion of her identity. She regards accent as one in the options for identity for those. She elucidates the accent “Chicano Spanish” that they speaks naturally develops as being a language from the border because with the border on what she lives. This Chicano Spanish accent causes a lot of difficulties for her as she's not regarded as the native speaker of both Spanish language and English Language. However, she considers herself socially isolated from either in the linguistic groups making her very own language unique and right for those individuals who, too, speak it. Anzaldua believes that this accent Chicano Spanish arose because of the people coming from diverse complex background desired to recognize themselves like a distinctive and unique group.

Anzaldua mentions the issues, difficulties, and stereotypes she needed to overcome in their own childhood because from the Chicano Spanish accent. The language as well as the accent she spoke in her childhood would have been a first step toward uncertainty consequently causing her angry and frustrated mood after a while. Moreover, this also led her to have problems with self-esteem.



The conditions that Anzaldua encountered in their life as a result of her language and accent has negative impacts on her personality and identity. She realizes herself to get unhappy with herself, however, soon, she recognizes, understands and accepts the “illegitimacy” of her accent and language.

Many people believe how the language they speak as well as their cultural identities is one along with the same. However, this is simply not true. There is diversity in a very language and discrimination about the basis of language can cause personality disorders. Gloria Anzaldua is a superb illustration of someone who is often a self-validated disregard with the undesirable reactions from the individuals who cannot tolerate individual’s diversity.

Language is a method to obtain identity and a language that individual speaks is important to identity. This a main idea that Anzaldua communicated in their own essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. Language is often a source of keeping people united and helps website visitors to identify one other, to resemble with the other person. It is ethical responsibility associated with an individual to value other’s diversity especially the text through which they communicate. It shouldn’t be the superiority of the language that will make you speak it but you comfortably to make a decision which language you must speak. You don’t need nor when you allow one to direct you how you can speak. Anzaldua, in their essay, encourages the minority 't be disheartened and discouraged from the way they speak. Moreover, she encourages them to accept their diversity, to simply accept that they're different and will need to take the contest to be polyglot or bilingual in America.

Gloria Anzaldua tries to argue with the audience to admit the reality that every person has their accent although some everyone has a fully different accent and speaks differently through the entire community. So, the Americans should have to improve their mindset to diversity. We should be tolerant enough to take each other’s alterations.


How to Tame a Wild Tongue Analysis:

Gloria Anzaldua, an essential character in Chicano literature, is definitely an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. Anzaldua, in her literary work, shows her hard experiences as being a woman- a mestiza, who thrives on a border and faces many problems as a result of mix cultures and languages.

Borderland or La Frontera’ can be a major work by Gloria Anzaldua that was published in 1987. Her works are generally based on individuals who live about the border between Mexico and USA and describes the socioeconomic, political, and mystical impact of European invasion around the borderland. The essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue?” is obtained from this book, and contains played an important role in elevating and highlighting the problem affecting the society particularly people living on borderlands. The Chicano movement, within the 1960s, has greatly influenced Gloria. Being a section of that movement, Gloria devoted almost all of his work towards the movement and events occur during that time. The issues she highlighted in their essays and other literary works include self-approval, racism, sexism, and construction of identity.

The essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is generally based about the issues that Chicano people run into in communication. Moreover, she addresses the forceful and violating the entire process of changing their psychological, social, and cultural arrays. The Chicano individuals have to confront a large amount of undesirable attitudes off their communities due to the Chicano Spanish language and accent they speak. Gloria describes this situation as “Linguistic Terrorism”. She claims that social involvement results in occurance from the particular identity of your individual.

The Chicano American or even the Mexican American were isolated from your common American citizens for some time length of time. They were not given their due rights and were without the benefit of basic facilities of life. They have zero excess on the quality educations. The vocational centers in which they receive low standard education developed no or low self-validation while they were ridiculed because of their origin and language they spoke. The children were scorned for speaking their native language in the class. This cause personality disorders and disinterest of students in studies increased leading to huge dropouts. Stigmatization resulted because of cultural domination.

In society, every human has diverse responsibilities. Society determines these roles. Moreover, identity formation is strongly linked and affiliated towards the social contribution. Ethnic, political and economic backgrounds will be the various variables that form these social affiliations. Similarly, these factors also members of cultures; while culture is directly connected to language; language differences cause cultural uncertainty.

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