Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue"

The rhetorical triangle talks about the interconnection between the author/writer, the respective target audiences and the purpose he or she is writing for.
Amy Tan, a first generation Asian-American is the author of the essay “Mother Tongue”. In her essay she writes about her mother’s limited command of English, the way this is perceived by outsiders and the impact it had on her growing up. The audience she addresses is her mother who has been reading all her drafts in the past. However, I believe she addresses a far broader audience with this particular essay – all first generation-Americans with emigrant parents. Why – because she illustrates many examples in which children of these parents, like her, have to handle certain daily situations. With her essay Amy Tan wants to serve two purposes. First, she tries to make people aware of the daily struggles emigrants have to face. Due to their apparent lack of expressive command of English, they are not taken seriously, people pretend not to understand them or they simply ignore them. Secondly, she says it is ok to have and speak certain “Englishes” with different people. Namely that the English that you speak with your instructor differs from the English you speak with your friends.