Rhetorical Situation Worksheet

Your name:

Kritan Baniya

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 was published in 1990. The topic she is responding to is the discrimination against “broken” or “limited English”. Her motivation for this is her experience growing up with her mother.

Author: Who is the author of this text?  What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue?

The author is Amy Tan/ An-Mei. She is a daughter of an immigrant, and her investment in the issue is her and her mother’s experience and a story about language.

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?

The publication Three Penny Review is an “American literary magazine…it offers fiction, memoirs, poetry, essays, and criticism to a readership”. The genre shows why the author’s paper was published through this publisher. This also explains why the author wrote what and how she wrote her text.   Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Review

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.

I think her intended audience was everyone who spoke the “English language”. I think everyone who spoke English could take away something from this article. To those who say, “broken English” is wrong English, the author shows them that it is just as fine, and to those who don’t speak “perfect English”, she inspires them to let them know that their not perfect English is perfect as it is. I think the publisher Three Penny Review was chosen to publish this article because it would attract an audience that pays attention to this issue.

Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?

I think the author’s purpose for this writing is to inform those who criticize the variations of English, that one is not worse than the other. You can know this because of the Publisher it was chosen to be published on, and also toward the end of the article, she says that her writing is in a way that her mother, who others say that they can’t understand her English, says her writing is “so easy to read”.

Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take?

I think the main claim/stance she takes is that different people speak different English and that they shouldn’t be treated differently because of it.

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.

I think the argument she uses to support her claim is her and her mother’s personal experiences, where in multiple cases, people treated her mother differently because she didn’t speak perfect English. But when her daughter, the author spoke perfect English in her mother’s place, they were treated nicely.

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.

-She writes about her and her mother’s personal experiences. -She writes exactly how her mother speaks. -She states that over time, her husband completely understands her. -Her mentality is what many people can be inspired by and follow.

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?

I want to remember that I relate to a lot of the experiences that the author has faced.