In the reading of her poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language,” Marlene NourbeSe Philip bends her words to portray the meaning of a problem of language that the slaves went through. The slaves were not allowed to speak their mother tongue or allowed to teach it to their children in order so that they wouldn’t be able to speak to each other and revolt or rebel against the slave owners. Without their native tongue, they were “dumb-tongued”. Instead of the native tongue, the slaves had the father tongue of English to speak, which was the slave owner’s language. If slaves were caught speaking to each other in their native language they would be severely punished. The word bending Marlene NourbeSe Philip does in her poem reading is with the line “English a foreign lan – lan – language- languish – anguish, English is a foreign anguish.” Here she is portraying the anguish the slaves were going through of only being allowed to speak English and not their native tongue. So English, which was a foreign language to the slaves, became a foreign anguish. This connects to Douglass’s slave narrative and highlights how difficult it was for the slaves not being able to speak to each other and not able to receive an education. This was the battle that Frederick Douglas was dealing with. He wanted to learn how to read and write in order to be able to help fight slavery. Once he learns how to read and write he teaches other slaves and when he moves to Massachusetts he becomes involved with the abolitionist movement through his writing and speaking.