Revision Guide

Search for
My Tongue
Sujata Bhatt
‘it
blossoms
out of
my
mouth.’
Search for My Tongue
Sujata Bhatt

“You ask me what I mean

by saying I have lost my tongue.”

(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)

VOCABULARY
Mother tongue - The
language that you grew up
with / the first language you
learned to speak.

Foreign tongue - A
language spoken by people
who are not from your native
country.
TASK
Do you speak
another language?
How would you feel
if you had to speak
that language all of
the time? Write
down your own
thoughts on these
questions, or
discuss with a
partner.
STORY/SUMMARY
The speaker talks directly to an unnamed addressee - we don’t
know if she’s got a specific person in mind, but we assume it is
addressed to all of us English speakers. She says she has ‘lost
her tongue’ and asks us to imagine having two tongues in our
mouth - the second being parasitic and eventually taking over
the place of the first. She explains that she has lost her first
tongue but doesn’t fully feel comfortable with the other - this
demonstrates an inability to fully communicate or express
herself properly. Her change of location has caused the original
tongue to ‘rot and die’.

There is a volta beginning with the line ‘but overnight while I

dream’, where the poem shifts in tone - we realise that in her
imagination and her subconscious, the original tongue
(language) grows back, powerfully like a spring flower, and
eventually it ‘blossoms’ out of her mouth.
SPEAKER / VOICE
The speaker of the poem uses first person pronouns - I’
/ ‘my’ / ‘me’ - to show that she (or he) is speaking from a
personal perspective. In many first person poems, the
speaker can be different from the poet or writer but in this
case it feels like the poet is speaking in quite a personal
sense, that she is exploring her own personal relationship
with the different languages that she speaks. It is very
important to note that the poem is written in her foreign
tongue, not her mother tongue.

There is also the use of direct address - ‘you ask me’ / ‘I

ask you’, which suggests that either the poem is a
response to a question that the poet was asked in real life
or that she feels the new society in which she lives makes
this kind of accusation to her and other non-native
speakers. The rest of the poem becomes an exploration
and justification of the idea of ‘losing your tongue’, i.e. the
ability to express yourself and communicate.
LANGUAGE
Synecdoche - The whole way through the poem, the word ‘tongue’ is
used to refer to the speaker’s language - it is an example of synecdoche,
where a part of something represents a whole - the tongue represents
the poet’s capacity to speak and communicate or express herself clearly.

Metaphor - The word ‘tongue’ (metonymy - ‘tongue’ is a metonym for

‘language’) is used both literally (as in a visual image of the muscle in the
mouth) and metaphorically, to represent language - this creates quite a
grotesque central image to the poem, which gives a slightly repulsive
feeling.

Extended metaphor - The poem uses a metaphor that compares the

speaker’s mother tongue to a plant, which is cut back and seems to die
but then starts to grow anew. She says that the ‘stump of a shoot’ ‘grows
back...grows longer’, showing that it is beginning to live again, and finally
‘the bud opens’ and ‘it blossoms’, as if she views her native language as a
flower that grows out of her. The plant is also personified as a powerful
force that is difficult to kill totally, even if it faces difficulty and hardship for a
while. The poet may be also making a reference to the idea of pruning -
when you prune a plant, you chop it back quite violently, which stops it
growing in the short term, but in the long term it grows back fresher and
much stronger. It seems that the poet feels language works in a similar
way - it can lie dormant in a person’s mind for a while, and suddenly it can
spring back.

Conversational style - As we would expect from a poem about language,

there is a conversational tone to the poem that takes the form of a
dialogue between the speaker, who seems to be Bhatt herself, and an
unnamed addressee -’you’. The language is idiomatic, it contains natural
fluent expressions, to show that Bhatt does have a natural fluency in her
second language as well as a longing for her native one.
STRUCTURE / FORM
• The poem is one single stanza that wavers in
line length - perhaps imitating the shape of a
tongue or the undulations of sound waves that
are produced in speech.

• Short lines - Though the poem has no set line

length, some lines are clearly much shorter than
others - they feel unfinished and end abruptly.
You can call this a hypometric line. One
example is ‘the foreign tongue.’, a short line that
conveys the lack of expression the poet has with
her new language when compared to her original,
native tongue. The line conveys an angry or
suspicious tone, as if the speaker does not trust
or respect her new language as much as her first
language.

• Long lines - ‘grows longer, grows moist, grows

strong veins’ - This line is noticeably longer than
the others, it is overextended and amplifies the
metaphor of the tongue as a plant which grows in
size and strength when the speaker least expects
it. You can call this a hypermetric line.

• Enjambment - ‘rot / rot and die in your mouth’

- this gruesome image is enhanced by the use of
enjambment, which repeats the word ‘rot’ and
also spreads it across two lines - perhaps
showing how rot and infection can spread
sinisterly and slowly cause death, suggesting that
the speaker feels this has happened to her
mother tongue.
ATTITUDES
• Nature is powerful and always finds a way to
thrive - the analogy which compares to the mother
tongue to a plant which grows and flowers out of the
speaker’s mouth enables us to understand the roots of
the speaker’s natural identity - the language she
speaks is an integral part of her, that may be cut back
or damaged by her surroundings, but it always has the
potential to flourish again.

• A person’s voice and language conveys much of

their identity - the speaker is forced to use an
awkward language which is not her own, and this
makes her feel isolated from her cultural roots. This is
a disempowering feeling, because she cannot fully
think or express herself clearly in the second language.

• A ‘mother tongue’ is so called because it is

something we experience in early childhood - the
speaker’s sense of a double tongue is a little
frightening because it seems unnatural - and rightly so,
because the new tongue is like a weed which grows in
her mouth and tries to usurp her mother tongue. The
mother tongue - her original native language- is
symbolic of her true self and it is the one that feels
comfortable and natural to her, because it is the first
language she learned to speak.
TASK
r e e u s es of
Find th th e p o e m.
y m b o l i sm i n e x p lain
s o l ,
e a c h symb
Fo r
w e r fu l and
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e.
evocativ

Colonialism is defined as “control by

one power over a dependent area or
people.” It occurs when one nation
subjugates another, conquering its
population and exploiting it, often while
forcing its own language and cultural
values upon its people. Source: National
Geographic

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p l o r e y our
Writ e r y to ex
i d e n ti ty . T
a c k g r o und
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CONTEXT
• Bhatt was born in India, 1956.
• In an interview, Bhatt said that her language is the
deepest layer of her identity.
• Her mother tongue is Gujarati and her second language
is English, she deliberately chose to write it in English -
but some versions of this poem do also have the Gujarati
script and a translation.
• The poem was written when she was studying English
in America, and it expresses her fears of losing her native
language, but also along with that a culture and an
identity.
• Colonialism - ‘colonialism’ is when one country takes
over and controls another, usually for access to the
original country’s resources. India was colonised by many
different European countries, but most notably it became
part of the British Empire during the Victorian era and
continued under British rule until its independence in 1947
(9 years before Bhatt was born). British cultural influences
in India continue until the present day - for instance, in the
schools many children are educated in both English and
their native tongue.

Colonialism is defined as “control by one power over a

dependent area or people.” It occurs when one nation
subjugates another, conquering its population and
exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and
cultural values upon its people.
Source: National Geographic
 THEMES
Emigration
Language
Identity
Creativity
Memory
Culture
Dreams and the Subconscious

TASK
Pick two of these themes,make a
mind map and add four separate
quotations that relate to it. Make
short notes of analysis,
explaining how and why each
one relates to your theme. What,
in your opinion, is the poet's final
message or statement about
each theme that you chose?
EXERCISES

1. Find three images of decay in the poem.

For each image, explain how it relates to
the poem’s meaning.

2. Find a semantic field of growth, using at

least three separate quotations.

3. Look at the original text of the poem,

with the original Gujarati script. How does
the use of this script contribute to the
meaning of the poem?

4. Why do you think the speaker feels more

connected to her language when she
dreams?
 ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. In what ways does the poem express
ideas about conflict?

2. How does Bhatt explore the theme of

identity in the poem?

3. Re-read Search for My Tongue. Compare

how the writers present the importance of
memory in Search for My Tongue and one
other poem from the anthology. You
should make reference to language, form
and structure. Support your answer with
examples from the poems. (Edexcel-style
question)

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