How to Tame a Wild Tongue
How to Tame a Wild Tongue
1. List the different kinds of languages the author says she speaks.
-1. Standard English,2. working class and slang English, 3.Standard Spanish, 4.Standard Mexican Spanish, 5.North Mexican Spanish Dialect, 6.Chicano Spanish (Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico), 7.Tex-Mex, 8.Pachco
2. Why does the author feel the need to speak so many languages?
-Because it is a way where the author and her fellow peers may talk to one another, and it was there way of communicating “We needed a language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language. For some of us, language is a homeland closer than the Southwest”
3. In the essay the author writes that she switches back and forth between the different languages. She calls this “switching codes”. Write about situations in your life when you switch codes.
-because in the story the author picked up Spanglish from school, so the author uses this type of language when talking to her brother and sister and other peers.
The Myth of the Latin Woman
1. What do the incidents on the bus, in the hotel, and at the poetry reading have in common (explain your answer)?
-on the bus, in the hotel, and in the poetry reading it all had to do with a Latin female in some sort.
2. What are the different kinds of Latinas that the author says are recognized in mainstream Anglo-American culture?
-Evita, Maria, Rita
3. Write about how you perceive people because of something about