The issue of bilingual learning has been a hot topic of debate for some time now. It is a consequence of the influx of immigrants into the United States whose first language is not English. Some people have felt that forcing them to learn a second language is stripping them of their heritage while others believe that the only way the immigrants can be fully assimilated is by learning English. I subscribe to Richard Rodriguez and Gloria Anzaldua posit in their essays “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” respectively, except for the fact that their first language was Spanish. I have an Indian heritage. However, I was born in America. Interestingly, despite their similar origins, the authors have varied experiences and opinions about the relationship between language and cultural identity. Consequently, they provide varied prescriptions of how foreign language speaking students should be taught in American classrooms.
According to Gloria Anzaldua, a cultural theorist and a poet who was born in Texas but brought up in America, every other foreign language ought to be embraced and made a language of instruction. In her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she narrates how she was punished for speaking in her native language while growing up (Anzaldua 312). How speaking in Spanish even during recess was cause enough to warrant her three licks. How everyone even the dentist (Anzaldua 311), attempted to control her wild roving Spanish tongue and turn it into a cultured, silent, non-gossiping, English or French speaking tongue. In her view, people who rejected her language and her stubborn tongue also by extension, rejected her as a person. She equates their actions to terrorism (Anzaldua 316). When one is stripped of her native tongue and forced to learn a new language, she is stripped of her culture and her identity. People are made to feel guilty when speaking in Spanish because the language has been censured in classrooms and public. The result is that the victim’s confidence in speaking his or her language is diminished. The person feel shy even uttering a word in your native tongue. The attacks on one’s native language and the constant reproach one has to battle with as a child when authorities insist that one abandons his/her first language in favor of the official language only serve to diminish one’s sense of self (Anzaldua 316). Later in life, one is overwhelmed by a sense of guilt for being alienated from their culture. For not being stubborn enough to retain his or her culture. We worry when we are older that we have been colonized to believe that our language was less sophisticated or less cultured, and we wish that we had retained our language. That we had not tamed our tongues.
Anzaldua further highlights the futility of trying to force a new culture, a new tongue onto a people that already had an identity. When her people are forced to learn the new language of colonizers, the result is that numerous dialects of Spanish and Spanglish arise (Anzaldua 314). When people are forced to abandon a value or belief they hold, they will usually come up with a new belief that they are comfortable with rather than adopt the one being forced on them in its entirety. Such was the case that precipitated so many dialects that border on the Spanglish language. To avoid such confusion and seemingly total disregard for a certain language, Anzaldua proposes that Spanish and other foreign languages be embraced and used as the language of instruction in schools until such a time that learning English will not disillusion the children.
Rodriguez, an editor who also struggled with bilingualism, on the other hand, feels that English ought to be used in schools and other public places while the foreign language remains a private affair. In his highly emotive narration, he cites how, as a child he was forced to speak in English for the first time when he went to school and how all he heard were high nasal sounds made by the ‘gringos’ (Rodriguez 222). In his innocence, he noted, with embarrassment how his parents had to struggle to articulate themselves in English. He explains how he was afraid of expressing himself in a language he knew little of. His only joy was derived in the sense of belonging he felt the moment he got home, an all-Spanish environment. At home, everyone could speak whatever was on their mind because they had Spanish and Spanish liberated them because they all understood it. In their Spanish home, voices were audible, and their parents were confident, at home, the author was assured of his parent’s protection because they seemed confident and aware of their surroundings (Rodriguez 226), a quality they were highly lacking when in public, speaking the language of the public, a language they hardly understood and could scarcely express themselves in let alone defend their offspring. Later, when the two nuns invade their homestead and convince the parents to speak to their children in English, the flamboyance and excitement that they previously enjoyed in the comfort of their language is ripped off (Rodriguez 227). The children are disillusioned, and even the parents seem to lose the cool they previously exhibited around the house. The embarrassment that Rodriguez only felt in public now creeps into their home, and it only leaves when he is confident enough to speak up in class, in English.
The two authors raise valid though highly varied arguments regarding bilingualism. Anzaldua feels that native languages ought to be embraced and promoted both at home and schools. In the opening of her narrative, she gives an analogy of her visit to the dentist where she links the dentist’s use of the word tongue as an actual organ to the topic of her essay in which the tongue is used metaphorically to mean language. The dentist points out that her tongue is too stubborn and must be controlled. This proposition resonates throughout the narrative where the author is constantly punished for her inability to tame her tongue into speaking the cultured language. The tongue is a stubborn organ indeed, rather than wholly adopt the new language that is forced on it, it takes some aspects of the two languages and formulates other totally different language. The author, therefore, proposes that, rather than taming the tongue into learning a new language, the native languages should be promoted, let them be the medium of instruction in schools so that the young ones do not feel as if they have been stripped of their culture. Later, when they understand the essence of the second language, they will seek for it. Further, Anzaldua, in a bid to illustrate the stubbornness of her tongue, peppers her English narrative with pure and untranslated Spanish words, and phrases. This, I feel is a deliberate message to all those who made her feel guilty for holding on to her Spanish. She seems to be communicating that they were unsuccessful in trying to tame her tongue, and they should have put the time into embracing her language and promoting it.
Rodriguez, on the other hand, is of the opinion that bilingual children should not be taught in their native language because to him, that is the intrusion into the family’s private life. With his highly dramatic narration, he indicates how he was so disillusioned when English intruded into their family’s private language that he does not know how to refer to his parents anymore. Severally, he calls them ‘he’ and ‘she’.
While I understand the plight of the two authors and any other bilingual child, as a bilingual child myself, I have to admit that I have not encountered half the challenges they raise. Despite my Indian heritage, I was born into an English Speaking family and the only Indian I speak, Telugu is with my grandparents and other relatives outside my nuclear family. English is the language I speak at home and in public, and while I feel the need to nurture my heritage, I tend to subscribe to Rodriguez assertions. We have to admit that our ancestors came to this great country and remained here for a reason. This nation gave and continues to give us opportunities that we lacked in our native lands. In this regard, it is unfair to claim that we were forced into learning their language yet we want to be embraced and accepted as one of them. We want to be recognized as Americans and treated equally but how can we do that when we cannot express ourselves in their language? Rodriguez only gains the courage to answer a question in the classroom when he feels he has gained the words to do so confidently. When we, like, Anzaldua, assert that these children be taught in their native language, until a certain level, are we not simply postponing the problem? I have seen my fellow Indians struggle to fit in and express themselves, not only in class but also at the department store and the gas station because they lack the English words to do so. I thank my parents for showing me that my heritage is much more than language. I am an Indian, English speaking or not, language is only a tool, and those who possess the appropriate tool are liberated.
Works Cited
Anzaldua, Gloria. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." 1987. Print.
Rodriguez, Richard. Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood. 1980. Print.
