Search For My
Tongue
Learning Objective:
• To be able to use close reading strategies
to analyse the structure, language and
feelings of the poem ‘Search For My
Tongue’.
Starter
1.
Many people living in Britain speak English
as a second language, think about the
following statements and write a
response to each:
a. I don’t like it when I hear people in
Britain speaking a foreign language. When
they are in Britain they should speak
English.
b. It must be a real advantage to be able to
slip between different languages.
c. It must be really confusing to have to use
two different languages.
Starter
2. If you are bi- or multi-lingual, what language do
you dream in?
3. People in different countries speak different
languages; people living in different parts of
the same country speak different dialects with
different accents.
a. How important is the way you talk and the
language you use to you?
b. If you moved to another country, how hard
would you try to keep up your original language
or accent?
Sujata Bhatt
Sujata Bhatt was born in 1956 in
India but later lived in the USA
and Germany. She writes in both
English and Gujarati, which she
describes as her ‘mother tongue’.
This poem was written when she
was at university in America. She
was worried she might forget
her original language. She writes
about being stuck between two
cultures: "I have always thought
of myself as an Indian who is
outside India."
Search For My Tongue
• You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
I ask you, what would you do
if you had two tongues in your mouth,
and lost the first one, the mother tongue,
and could not really know the other,
the foreign tongue.
You could not use them both together
even if you thought that way.
And if you lived in a place you had to
speak a foreign tongue,
your mother tongue would rot,
rot and die in your mouth
until you had to spit it out.
I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,
• it grows back, a stump of a shoot
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
it ties the other tongue in knots,
the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth,
it pushes the other tongue aside.
Everytime I think I've forgotten,
I think I've lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.
First Reading
1.
‘Tongue’ seems to have more than one
meaning in this poem. What are they?
2. The script in the middle of the poem is
Gujerati. Why do you think the poet
suddenly changes the language of the
poem?
3. This comes from a longer poem; by the
end of this extract has the poet found
what she was looking for?
Tongue Tied
tongue-tied
a part of the
body
Lost your
tongue
the language
that you
speak
Search For My Tongue explores the conflict between the
poet’s ‘mother tongue’ and the foreign language she also
uses. There are three main parts to the poem but do you
know what they are?
Lines
What is happening?
1 - 15
The poet explains that she is fluent in
two languages. She uses the image of
having “two tongues in your mouth” to
convey the idea.
16 - 30
31 - 38
Search For My Tongue explores the conflict between the
poet’s ‘mother tongue’ and the foreign language she also
uses.
Lines
What is happening?
1 - 15
The poet explains that she is fluent in
two languages but she is worried that
she might lose her mother tongue.
16 - 30
When she dreams it is in her mother
tongue (this section is written in
Gujarati – the poet’s mother tongue).
31 - 38
She describes how her mother tongue
‘grows back’ just when she thinks she
has lost it.
Structure
As we have seen the poem is
written in three sections. In the
first part Sujata Bhatt explains
how difficult it is to speak two
languages and conveys her fear
that she may forget the language
she grew up with.
In the middle section (the centre
of the conflict) she writes these
ideas in Gujarati (lines 17 – 30).
Then in the third section she
translates these thoughts into
English (lines 17-30). Here she
concludes that that although her
'mother tongue' dies during the
day, it 'grows back' in her
dreams at night, remaining
strong, healthy and robust.
Structure
1.
Lines 17-30 are the Gujerati version of
lines 31-38. Why do you think the poet
structured her poem in this way, with the
Gujertai section in the middle of the two
English sections?
2. Why do you think she put the Gujertai
version before its meaning in English?
Structure
3. In an autobiographical poem, you might
expect the poet to write continually in the
first person. In the opening section of this
poem, the writing is shaped as an answer to
a question and there is much use of the
second person. Why do you think the poet
chose to do this?
Imagery
In Search For My Tongue Sujata Bhatt says
that knowing two languages is like having 'two
tongues in your mouth’.
The poet uses an extended metaphor to
express her thoughts and
feelings about speaking two
languages. In the third section
she compares her tongue to a plant.
Why is this an effective image?
Why Compare the Tongue to
a Plant?
A plant is a living organism which needs
nurturing like the poet’s original language.
Plants die in the wrong environment – Sujata
Bhatt wrote this poem when she was living in
the USA, where she spoke and wrote English
the majority of the time, this environment
made her fear that she would forget her
mother tongue.
Like a plant she thinks that her mother
tongue will die of neglect but it starts to
bud and grow strong and beautiful
('blossoms') again.
Imagery
Image
'would rot / rot and
die'
'it grows back'
'grows strong veins'
‘it blossoms out of my
mouth’
Effect created
Imagery
Image
Effect created
'would rot / rot and die in
your mouth'
Horrible image conveys her
fear and horror at the
thought of losing her mother
tongue
'it grows back'
The tongue is like a growing
plant
'grows strong veins'
Sounds strong, healthy and
robust
‘it blossoms out of my
mouth’
Image of beauty - the plant
bursts into flower
Language
1.
Explore Bhatt’s use of repetition in the
first fifteen lines of the poem. Why do
you think she uses so repetition?
2. In the final section of the poem, she uses
a single metaphor to show how the
mother tongue is not lost. The single
metaphor is developed over eight lines.
Write down what the metaphor is and
explain its separate stages.
Language
3. Lines 1-15 describe someone’s conscious
feelings whereas lines 31-38 describe a
dream. How does the writer use language
differently to capture the differences
between everyday speech and the world of
dreams?
Poetic Techniques
Technique Evidence Effect
metaphor
Personification
pronouns
repetition
Rot and die
in your
mouth
Horrible image conveys her fear
and horror at the thought of
losing her mother tongue
Feelings and Attitudes
The poet tries to make the
reader understand what it is
like to fear losing your
mother tongue. The fear of
the loss of her first language
represents a anxiety about
losing her Indian identity.
She is concerned that she is
caught between two cultures.
However the poem ends
happily when she realises
that her mother tongue won’t
die away but will always be a
part of her.