Rhetorical Analysis Essay – Alejandro’s Site

Alejandro Estevez

Prof. Crowe

Freshman Composition

20 October 2020

Cover Letter for Rhetorical Analysis

In my Rhetorical Analysis essay, I focused on Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”. I decided to keep it straight forward because I wanted to encapsulate some aspects of writing I learned from reading her work. My points I made in my paper agreed with Tan’s argument and the evidence she presented to support her main claim. Also, my audience for my essay was intended to be the academic community (i.e. teachers and students). With that in mind, I tried to keep the tone throughout the essay as serious and I used formal language instead of language I use with my friends. One thing I gained in this essay is a new perspective of analysis. Before I only applied this depth of analysis in literature in previous English classes, I never have really used the same approach towards personal essays or informative essays. Another thing I learned from this assignment is the assumption of all the writer’s actions being deliberate; thus, further supporting their argument or damaging their argument’s validity. Although I am making this process of rhetorical analysis sound easy, I found it especially difficult to dive deeper and escape from surface-level observations and deductions. For example, the irony I found in between English being taught as subjective and then society standardizing it, took a very long time to realize that was probably a key moment she deliberately placed there. Another thing I gained was an appreciation for the writer’s authorship in their writing. Everything is on the page for a reason. It could be something glaringly obvious or something more subliminal, regardless each component is woven together to make a comprehensive masterpiece (at least in Tan’s case).

In terms of the relation of this course, this essay made me dive into rhetoric and all its elements more than I ever have. Since this is my first rhetorical essay, I needed to make sure I understood all the elements of rhetoric and how they are used. In “Mother Tongue” rhetorical concepts like purpose, audience, exigence, evidence, and argument, are used effectively in order to make convincing points to persuade the audience. I also exercised some of the Course Learning Outcomes through completing this assignment. For example, I was able to “Compose texts that integrate my stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation” in this assignment. This was achieved by just writing the essay. This Course Learning Outcome basically outlines my process of creating this paper. I made an argument and used deductions I made from Tan’s essay to support my argument. In addition to Course Learning Outcome #8, I also “Practiced systematic application of citation convention”. Although I did not cite extensively in this paper, I used MLA Citation in one instance throughout my essay. In future essays I plan to dive into the practice of citation more in depth.

Alejandro Estevez

Prof. Crowe

Freshman Composition

20 October 2020

Rhetorical Analysis Essay

“Mother Tongue”, written by Amy Tan, is a personal essay that discusses her childhood living in an immigrant home and she also discusses her mother’s difficulty assimilating to English. As the essay progresses, Tan uses her memories and experiences as evidence, and then she reflects on her experiences in a very analytical retrospective manner. Amy Tan clearly identifies society’s views on the difference between “standardized” English and “broken” English. Her thesis combines this claim and her experiences growing up in a Chinese immigrant household. Amy Tan’s argument is there is no such thing as broken English and English usage does not define intelligence or worthiness of respect. Tan presents an interesting thesis, and her personal experiences are effective in conveying the importance of language usage and its social implications.

In the essay, Tan first presents her accolades, which demonstrates her credibility in formulating her argument. She is an experienced writer/author making “Language a tool of [her] trade” (Tan 1). Although she states that she is not a scholar of English literature, she is a scholar in Linguistics. Thus, she understands the science of language and its structure. Another thing that makes her a qualified source is her understanding of the challenges of assimilating to the “standard” English because she witnessed the difficulties of her mother firsthand. Therefore, the writer’s angle totally dominates this paper. Although this means examples of logical evidence are absent in the paper, the experiences Tan chooses to describe effectively contribute to her main claim.

Tan uses a variety personal experiences to fully support her claim. The exigence that made Tan begin to analyze experiences with her mother is a realization between formal use of English (English used at school or other serious settings) and casual English (English used with family and friends). After realizing this difference, she realizes the larger social implications of language and manifested this through recounting personal experiences that support her argument. For example, she says her mother reads the Forbes report and listens to the Wall Street Week, which clearly demonstrates her ability to understand complex concepts despite her speaking “broken” English. Then in terms of the respect portion of the argument, she uses an emotional appeal through accounting experiences where her mother was being treated as sub-human just for her accent and usage of the language. In almost all of the experiences described her mother is in the position of the victim, making the reader easily sympathetic. For instance, her mother was denied healthcare because she spoke “broken” English. In this experience there is a sense of dehumanization simply because her mother does not meet the standard of “perfect” English. If anyone were to view this event, no one would support this behavior and treatment. In one of Tan’s experiences pertaining to herself, she discusses how the education system teaches English as open ended or subjective. Thus, her argument of broken English being nonexistent is validated through this claim. There’s an irony between how there is a disconnect between how society views English as being black and white/standardized versus the education system (one of the most fundamental influencers of society) treating English as subjective and open ended. The only evidence that is missing is logos (statistics and other means of hard evidence), which is the only weak point in her essay. At the same time, if she included statistics that describe a disconnection between English usage and intelligence, she would be disproving her main argument of how intellect or respect cannot be quantified by language usage. Besides this weak point, the evidence presented to support her argument is extremely strong which, successfully makes her claim convincing to the audience.

The author’s diction strengthens her argument and she strategically uses her evidence to appeal to the audience. The audience of this essay is people who can empathize/sympathize in the situations Tan describes or people who do believe that the usage of English equates intelligence and worthiness of respect. Tan’s main purpose in writing this essay is to educate people on this common misconception. The writer uses very clear and direct language making the essay very easy to navigate and easily understood. She claims that her writing reflects the English she grew up with. This not only makes this essay more personal than it already is, it also makes a statement in how effective this “simple” version of English is when explaining dense subjects. Thus, indirectly, Tan’s diction in writing this essay supports her argument.

The genre and publication of the essay influences the structure, content, and argument of “Mother Tongue”. The essay was published under the Threepenny Review, which is a magazine that includes memoirs, poetry, and essays. Amy Tan’s personal essay fits into this publication because all these genres are rather personal and somewhat based on subjective information. In the original publication of this essay the title was “Under Western Eyes”, which further represents the difficulty of assimilation into a society that judges someone’s worth based on language usage. It also represents a sense of alienation because the title identifies two differences, geographical difference (resulting in a difference in cultures) and a difference in metaphorical positioning in society (the word “under” suggests they are treated as a lower than other Americans).

Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” provides a clear picture of the difficulties of assimilating to American standards from the perspective of an immigrant household. From retrospective analysis and reflection on past experiences, she formulates a thesis that states that someone’s English usage does not define their intellect or worthiness of respect, and broken English is nonexistent. With Tan’s understanding of English Linguistics combined with her personal accounts, she successfully supports her argument through ethos and pathos. Although there is not any logical evidence, the argument remains strong through other means of support, such as diction and the original publication of the essay.

Alejandro Estevez

Prof. Crowe

Freshman Composition

16 November 2020

Cover Letter for Research Paper

In my Research Essay, I wanted to discuss the American Dream and the Death of the American Dream in its relation to the immigrant experience. I was highly indecisive in the first stages of developing my topic. The way I arrived at this topic was because being a first-generation American is an important part of my identity and watching the presidential debates made me interested in the history of immigration and the treatment of immigrants.

Since this was a Research Essay, I wanted to keep my tone serious and keep my diction simple yet effective because immigration and opportunity are very hot and controversial topics right now. In the process of writing my paper I found this concept of the American Dream being something polarizing. I kept mentioning it as something that is either achieved or not achieved, when, success is subjective. One person’s idea of success can be extremely different from another person’s idea of success. I think that’s something I could have used to my advantage more throughout the essay because it would keep the reader interested. Another benefit of writing around success being subjective is the wide range of audience. Although my intended audience is the academic realm, the audience could be a person who is an immigrant or not, or it could be a person who is a diehard patriot who believes America is the best place on earth or a person who dislikes America. If I were to say success is a spectrum, thus, there is no achievement of the American Dream or Death of the American Dream, which would have been a much more intriguing argument. One other issue I had with my paper was the sources. About a half of my original sources I could not retrieve so I used my family as examples and replaced my statistical information with the simple population numbers in the 1800s and some statistics regarding contemporary immigration. Besides those two retrospective concerns, I was overall happy with how my paper came out.

I really practiced all of the course learning outcomes through this essay since the subject is rather dense. For example, I heavily relied on “Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias” and “Practice systematic application of citation conventions”. Even though I practiced MLA citation throughout high school, there is always room for improvement, and I enjoyed the research process.

How Does the Immigrant Experience Shape the American Dream?

The American Dream has been core to American culture for hundreds of years, but how did it develop and what experiences have shaped this concept? Ironically, in history, the United States was always perceived as the land of freedom and opportunity; even though many people practiced things that contradicted freedom such as slavery and genocide (genocide of Native Americans to increase expansion). Due to the American ideal that everyone deserves equal opportunity, the American Dream is defined as an individual working extremely hard to reach the most ambitious goals and aspirations. Since this concept implies working to climb the social ladder, it gives hope to socially and economically marginalized groups of people. The immigrant experience encapsulates this hope of achieving a happy and comfortable life through the means of work. Although the American Dream allows for success through opportunity, often times, laws and society “gatekeeps” immigrants from gaining success no matter how much work they do, which is the death of the American Dream. Both immigrant experiences demonstrate the impact of how immigrants influence American culture and in formulating the American Dream.

The history of the immigrant experience in the United States has been extremely prevalent in describing what the American Dream is supposed to be. In the industrial revolution (roughly 1865-1900) “the U.S. population more than tripled, from about 23.2 million in 1850 to 76.2 million in 1900” (Newman 361) making the total population of the U.S primarily made up of immigrants. Many of these immigrants came from Eastern Europe and Asia, which diversifies the Western, Anglo-Protestant culture that dominated the population. Most, if not all immigrants, left their home country to escape oppressive governments, religious persecution, and hope for opportunities to advance economically in society (Newman 361). Even in the formation of the first colony in Virginia, opportunity was one of the main driving forces in the decision of investing in the joint-stock company to establish settlements in America. Therefore, the birth of America was founded upon the desire for a possibility to better one’s life through literally building from the ground up. Since the immigrant experience is centered around the search for freedom and opportunity and immigration resulted in the birth of the country, it can be said that the American Dream exactly represents the goals and means of achieving success in the United States.

Although the immigrant hopes in the pre twentieth century is exactly what the American Dream states, society has rejected these ideals formulating the concept of the Death of the American Dream. This is best represented in the industrial revolution because there was not enough recognition in improving the life of the poor (including new and old immigrants) and there was no recognition in the struggle/disparity between the rich and poor. Due to the increase of jobs in a variety of emerging industries and factories, there was a shift from rural life to urbanization and cities. A majority of immigrants resided in these urban environments resulting in congestion, horrible sanitation, rampant disease, etc… These conditions also applied to the working conditions that immigrants would encounter. Jacob Riis’, How the Other Half Lives, contains a series of pictures exposing the life of those who live in the slums (observe Figure 1-3). Since there were no labor laws that were supposed to protect workers, immigrants were often treated as expendable cheap labor by exploitative factory owners (Newman 632). This notion was rather universal and did not consider how influential the work was. For example, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was one of the greatest influences in bolstering the American economy and the people who constructed it included Irish immigrants and Chinese immigrants. They completed this enormous feat under dangerous backbreaking working conditions off little wage and no breaks. This made the life of immigrants in the work force stagnant and there was not much advancement in their status. Another example of society hindering the flourishing of immigrants, is the restriction of immigration to the United States. This includes laws/political action like the Chinese Exclusion act, literacy tests that restricted employment, and a tax that they had to pay before entering the U.S. (Newman 362). People who supported this include:

1.labor unions, which feared that employers would use immigrants to depress wages and break strikes, (2) a nativist society, the American Protective Association, which was openly prejudiced against Roman Catholics, and (3) social Darwinists, who viewed the new immigrants as biologically inferior to English and Germanic stocks (Newman 362).

Literature, Art, and Photography captured the depressing sentiments felt by the immigrant community, from the quality of life to working conditions.

The phenomenon of the Death of the American Dream is also depicted in the American literature. For instance, in The Great Gatsby, written by Scott Fitzgerald in the age of Modernism, depicted this concept in the 1920s. In Chapter 2, Fitzgerald describes the borough of Queens as the “valley of ashes” where a billboard of two large eyes looking over the over the land. The valley of ashes is described as gray, gloomy, empty and businesses are stagnant. The eyes almost represent God looking over this depressing scene in without any intervention, symbolizing the death of faith and hope, which are core concepts of the American Dream. Although, Fitzgerald does not say immigrants work or live in the “valley of ashes”, it is implicit that immigrants are working to get no where or getting no work if American owned businesses are completely lifeless. This is because immigrants come to America with little to no belongings or money, greeted with discrimination, and they must assimilate to a new culture. Another piece of literature that implied the Death of the American Dream was A Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller. The play follows a hopeful American salesman who perceives himself as a successful and well-liked salesman, while in reality, he’s unsuccessful and does not advance in society no matter how hard he works. He believes this false reality up until his tragic death in a car accident. This is another example where even an American cannot achieve his own goals through hard work; thus, a majority of immigrants must be stuck in a cycle of working without making progress.

The immigrant experience and the American Dream in the nineteenth and twentieth century somewhat parallels and simultaneously diverging from the contemporary immigrant experience. Many contemporary immigrants experience both achieving the American Dream or rejecting the preconceived notions of the United States being a land of opportunity. One of the most obvious changes in immigration since the industrial age is the diversity in the influx of immigration in the contemporary era. Instead of immigration being almost exclusively coming from Europe and Asia, now, immigrants come from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and more regions. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s 2019 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, there were 1,031,765 immigrants who entered the United States legally. This is very stark difference from the influx of immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth century, which is due to the harsher immigration laws and the enforcement of ICE. An example of the exclusion of the American Dream for immigrants through systemic means is the immigration process as a whole. One of the most complex and frustrating problems with American immigration is the amount of time it takes for immigrants to come to the US legally. This then becomes an issue for future immigrants who are trying to escape from dire situations like war, prejudice, or wide scale terrorism. Essentially, these are situations where waiting is not an option. Some similarities between both of these immigrant experiences could be living and or working conditions, being abused by their advantageous employers, or they might experience rejection for not assimilating to the American culture. Despite all these obstacles and roadblocks, immigrants persevere in hopes to provide the future generations of their families with a foundation that they do not have to experience the same struggle they had to endure.

In my family the existence of both the death of American Dream and the possibility of achieving the American Dream have been supported through life experience. All my family are immigrants from the Dominican Republic, including my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and some cousins. Fortunately, through hard work and dedication my father and mother decided to be the first people in their respective families to graduate college and receive doctoral degrees. They achieved this enormous feat, while not being accustomed to the culture, being unable to speak the language fluently, working to provide for their family, and taking care of the needs for their families. This is a testament that the immigrants already come to the U.S with the American Dream mentality in order to succeed in life and beyond. On the other hand, there are many instances where societal circumstances come in between the ambitions and the execution of those ambitions. For example, two of my uncles on my father’s side have worked extremely hard working in “bodegas” and working as taxi drivers. In spite of all the hard work they have been doing for years, they are relatively in the same position they were in when they started working in the U.S. These are only few examples of the Death of the American Dream and the achievement of the American Dream. Every immigrant has their own sets of circumstances and conditions that make this situation less black and white.

The American Dream has been an ideology in American culture that defined the U.S as a land of opportunity and the only way to succeed is through the means of work. Although the U.S is considered a land of opportunity, some people take advantage and work extremely hard and find themselves in the same position as they were previously. This phenomenon is called the Death of the American Dream. The immigrant experience almost fully shapes the definition of the American Dream in their search for freedom and their desire to provide for their families in hope that no one will struggle like they have. Throughout history, especially in the Age of Industrialism, immigrants have both experience achieving the American Dream against all odds, and others have unfortunately not achieved the American Dream because of systemic “gatekeeping” opportunity. Examples of systemic “gatekeeping” includes unaffordable education, the lawful process of immigration, and the enforcement of harsh immigration laws. Even though the immigrant experience in relation to the American Dream seems polarizing, the concept of success is rather subjective. An individual may consider success to be receiving less that minimum wage or gaining doctoral degrees. The elusive concept of success makes the phenomenon of the American Dream complicated but, it can fuel the drive to maintain anything and everything America can offer.

Index

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Work Cited

“Chapter 2.” The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald, Gale Group, 1925, pp. 23–38.

“The Growth of Cities and the American Culture.” United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination, by John J. Newman and John M. Schmalbach, Amsco School Publications, 2018, pp. 361–373.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Riis, Jacob August. How the Other Half Live: Studies among the Tenements of New York. Franklin Classics, 2018.

“Table 3. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 2017 to 2019.” Department of Homeland Security, 28 Oct. 2020, www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2019/table3.