The importance of language is expressed in both “Discourse on the Logic of Language” by M. NourbeSe Philip and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass. They both emphasized the way language shapes identity, community and a sense of self. Throughout her poem, Philip repeats the idea of a “mother tongue” and “father tongue” along with transforming the words of “English language” to “foreign language” to “anguish”. The mother tongue, which can be describes as the language of one’s ancestors, is said to have been denied from the slaves, therefore impacting and altering their connection to their past and their family. Which Philip discusses. Instead, slaves needed to know English, which is the foreign father tongue. Language is a necessary part of human connection, and to deny someone the ability to learn the language of their ancestral past is to deny them a part of themselves. And to deny someone the ability to read and write is a way to deny someone from building community and strong human understandings. The way Philip emphasizes the sounds of language as well as the familial connections of language gives the poem an emotional undertone. Overall it serves to show the way slaves were stolen of their identity through this aspect of language.

Frederick makes similar connection in his narrative. He was inspired to begin learning to read and write firstly by his lesson with Mrs. Auld, and secondly by Mr. Auld’s forbidding of any further lessons. Douglass realized that one of the sources of power for white slave-owner’s was the slave’s denial of education and ability to read and write. These skills became a sources of personal power for Douglass as well as gave him something to work towards for his own identity. Later on he was able to teach other slaves those skills at a Sabbath school while with Master Freeland. One thing Frederick said about that school was how “They came because they wished to learn. Their minds have been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness” (49). To give someone the ability to learn, is to give someone the ability to get power and the ability to create ideas for themselves; both things which slave holders knew and therefore kept away from the slaves.