Search For My Tongue Flashcards
Structure
-Free verse
-stanza in Gujarati
-extended metaphor
Free verse
-reflects the freedom of expression that comes with using you mother tongue
-reflects the irregularity of loss
Gujarati
-shows the reader what it is like not to understand
-displays a moment of connection
Extended metaphor
-language is spoken of as a tongue
-allows for stark imagery, and a tongue is physically part of you
Meaning
Displays the poet’s anxiety at losing her mother tongue
Imagery
-‘It grows back…’
-‘rot and die in your mouth’
-‘pushes the other tongue aside’
‘It grows back, a stump of a shoot, grows longer grows moist grows strong veins’
-metaphor for a plant
-conveys a sense of hope
-personification
-reinforces importance of language and cultual identity as it grew back
‘Rot and die in your mouth, until you had to spit it out’
-emotive language
-helps us to appreciate her anxiety
-desperation and fear, as her mother tongue is rotting
-‘spit it out’ conveys disgust
‘Pushes the other tongue aside’
-strength
-shows how our culture never truly leaves us
Language
-Rhetorical questions
-repetition
-metaphors
-direct address
Rhetorical questions
-includes the reader
-persuasive
Repetition
-repetition of rot exaggerates it
-puts emotional stress on it
Metaphors
-Causes emotional responses from the reader
-hyperbole (possibly)
Direct adresss
-persuasive
-includes the reader, making the imagery for affective
