Search For My Tongue

Sujata Bhatt

Narrator: Barbara Njau

 Title is a metaphor for one's
loss of identity in a new country
First person pronoun:
dramatic monologue Enjambment
Metaphor: lost their cultural identity
Caesura - we begin to Repetition of second person pronoun is
sense her frustration conversational but also confrontational
Alliteration - forceful Metaphor: bilingual
Mother tongue - nurturing
and protecting
Second language is alien
Pre-modifier 'foreign' gives
Repetition - preoccupied with how language shapes her identity
us the sense it is imposed on her
There's a conflict between both
Repetition of conditional clause languages - she is forced to choose one

She is robbed of her freedom

to speak her native language
Repetition emphasises decay - this
verb shows her horrific experience
of losing her mother tongue Language and one's mother tongue is personified
Repetition of violent, disgusting verb creates parallels
Non-Standard English suggests a with not being able to say something - struggling with
weak understanding of English words and suddenly spewing non-sensical language.
Also connotes xenophobia - people see her language
Symbolises the subconscious perseverance of culture as "disgusting" and it must be spat out
 Gujarati - context: Sujata Bhatt is an Indian Gujarati
speaker who studied and worked in USA and UK

Sujata Bhatt puts this

stanza between English
verses to show that at
the speaker's core, they
still identify with their
Gujarati heritage which
reasserts itself
 Semantic field of nature adds to the
extended metaphor of plants - the mother
Caesura - volta tongue is a plant from which other languages
sprout. It's cut but then it grows back
Repetition - her core
identity reasserts itself
Personification - her mother tongue
Third stanza is a translation
succeeds over the
of the Gujarati stanza
invading second language
Forceful verb emphasises Connotes new life
how her Gujarati tongue
is more powerful
The terrible consequences of
migration and Westernisation

Her mother tongue is like a blossoming flower -

showing the beauty of her language and culture
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