Nicole Galasso
Professor Pooni
First-Year Writing
October 25, 2018
Discourse on the Logic of Language
The poem, Discourse on the Logic of Language by M. NourbeSe Philip, portrays the
theme of domination and dominated. In this poem the narrator talks a lot about her mother
tongue and father tongue as well as foreign language. She continues to talk and repeat the word
‘language’ in many different ways, almost as if she was trying to understand how to pronounce
it, and what it truly means. Both times, while repeating the word ‘language’, she concluded with
the word ‘anguish’, and to me that spoke volumes. It’s as if the narrator is not only trying to
figure out the origin and language of her mother and father, but is suffering through this process.
“My father tongue
is a foreign lan lan lang
language
l/anguish
anguish
a foreign anguish is english–”
Maybe even the process of learning this new “foreign anguish” that is English. In Edict 1, the
Commented [WU1]:
