The Apparent Misplacement of the Word "Strong" in The House on Mango Street Claudia Excaret Santos Campusano College

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros presents a Mexican-American principal character (who is also the narrator) that appears to make slight mistakes with the English language, but acquires to convey different meanings by this. These slight mistakes can be the apparent misuse of collocations, the strange use of pronouns, or the curious conjugations of some verbs. One of these cases is presented in page 13 when the narrator states that "the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong" (Cisneros 13). This unusual use of the word "strong" in the quotation appears to be a misplaced collocation, but it achieves to acquire multiple meanings that are reflected throughout the entire text.

The use of the word "strong" appears to be a misused collocation, but, instead, conveys the idea not only of "much", which would be the usual collocation and what appears to be replacing, but of food, smell, weakness, and being influenced by the society. The unusual collocation by conveying these ideas creates an apparent relation between the conveyed ideas and the noun being modified by the word "strong", which is women. It relates women to food, smells, weakness, and it shows how the narrator has been influenced by the society...