Language and varieties of Language are methods for communicating and perceiving the numerous social identities individuals have. Social identities are outflows of ID with a social group (and are not quite the same as individual identity). For instance, a person may be 'a person', 'an instructor', 'a football player', 'a Turkish', 'a European' and so. According as what number of gatherings they relate to, and they will have a tendency to talk in diverse routes as per which identity is prevailing in a certain situation, at school, in the family, in a class, when going in Europe, and so on. Languages are both procured characteristically and taught formally and both natural acquisition and formal teaching create, fortify or debilitate the connections between dialects and personalities. An imperative language/ identity connection is the one between 'national language' and 'national identity'. This connection may be made, reinforced or debilitated by formal instructing in schools, particularly in 'Language as Subject' and a 'Framework/Handbook for Language(s) of Education' would need to address this issue. The reason for this paper is to present (some of) the perspectives which are paramount for society and personality in L2 taking in and instructing. Culture and identity has been broadly acknowledged by both instructors and scientists as one of the key components that impact the rate and achievement of second/remote dialect (L2) adapting particularly in foreign language classes. Culture and identity gives the essential impulse to launch learning the L2 and later the main thrust to manage the long and regularly dull taking in methodology; surely, the various elements included in L2 procurement presuppose inspiration to some degree. With... ... middle of paper ... ...nt on L2 English stresses, on which this study positions itself. Besides, I investigate the basic ideas of way of life and also the past hypotheses about social character, and conceptualize personality inside the extent of social personality. I additionally show how the present study approaches personality. Finally, I search the past experimental studies which incorporate the issues of both stress and character. These studies incorporate the issues of English dialect taking in and educating, and the speaker's character (re)constructions. In the wake of evaluating the past studies, I present the reason for this study, and also its noteworthiness to the field of English training. From these three steps, I give a standpoint of the issues of stress and character encompassing L2 English speakers, and present my point of view on these issues as the essential specialist.
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of America, but instead as an alien, outsider, and the like. Therefore, Asian Americans and other immigrants feel the need to mask their true identity and imitate the native language as an attempt to fit into the mold that makes up what people would define how a native of America is like. Throughout the novel, Henry Park attempts to mask his Korean accent in hopes to blend in as an American native. Chang-Rae Lee suggests that a person who appears to have an accent is automatically marked as someone who is not native to America. Language directly reveals where a person is native of and people can immediately identify one as an alien, immigrant, or simply, one who is not American. Asian Americans as well as other immigrants feel the need to try and hide their cultural identity in order to be deemed as a native of America in the eyes of others. Since one’s language gives away the place where one is native to, immigrants feel the need to attempt to mask their accents in hopes that they sound fluent ...
When asked to define ones cultural identity people usually take the path that leads to their country of origin. They describe their beliefs and tradition which mirrors the values of people within that geographic location. But what about the people who are torn between two cultures? How would they define their cultural identity? This is the problem faced by Henry Park, the protagonist of the book Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee. Originally from Korea, he immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was little. However, his struggle of trying to find his acceptance into the American culture still continues. The book outlines his endless uncertainty of trying to define his cultural identity and his feelings as an outsider to the American Culture. Not being able to commit to either of the cultures leaves Henry confused regarding his true Cultural identity which Chang very artfully presents as a fuzzy line between the American and Korean Culture.
...y to learn another culture, another language, to make themselves grow. We may lose our accents and regional dialects but allowing yourself to accept the dominant dialect may be the only way to share minds, cure society’s many problems, and embrace its advancements. The decline of the way of speaking can die out without sacrificing one’s culture and the ability to progress and realizing this guarantees success.
Another difficulty cultures deal with is language and the way people speak. In some cases, people struggle to belong by making changes in the way they speak the English language just to be assimilated. They attempt to use words and letters, as well as body language that fit in the norm; all in an attempt to denounce their original intonation and style of pronunciation. One ...
In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group it claims to. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is. At one point in time, these stereotypes may have been true; however, in today’s modern society, most of these stereotypes are outdated and false, which leads them to turn into misconceptions. Usually, stereotypes are utilized to humiliate and degrade the person or group; they also do not provide any beneficial outcomes. Stereotypes focus on how a particular group acts because of the radical ideas and actions of the few, how a particular group looks, or how that group is physically lacking in some way. These stereotypes often lead to conflicts because the group does not appreciate the way it is being perceived. Seldom are the stereotypes placed on a group of people truthful and accurate. Some hardly even apply to the particular group people it claims to. It is true that how people are perceived has a big impact on how other individuals interact with them; however, people are not perceiving these groups correctly.
Spackman, C. L. (2010). Culture and Second Language Acquisition. Ohio Dominican University. Retrieved from http://www.osugisakae.com/tesol/matesol-papers/spackman-culture-and-sla.pdf.
Gardner and Lambert (1972, in Dornyei, 2005) believed that second languages played a role as ‘mediating factors between different ethno-linguistic communities and thus regarded the motivation to learn the language of the other community as a primary force responsible for enhancing or hindering intercultural communication and affiliation’.
—. Language: Readings in Language and Culture. 6th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
The movie Babel (2006), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is an interesting and impressive film. This movie shows four different episodes, which are all related to each other. This movie is about the relationship between stereotypes and communications of people, and the way the film discusses the topic to the audience is very interesting, because there are many episodes. There are four episodes in this film; first is Susan and Richard’s story, second is Yusef’s episode, third one is Amelia’s episode, and the last one is Chieko’s story.
To commence this discussion, it is first essential to establish an understanding surrounding the role of language in relation to national identity. Theoretically, the more power language has in this relation, the more powerful language planning may be when creating a national identity. However, the role language plays in this respect is somewhat problematic to define and has proven to be a debatable topic among nationalists, sociologists and sociolinguists. For instance, May demonstrates that ‘sociological commentators, unlike sociolinguists, have generally been loath to apportion a prominent role to language in the explanation of minority ethnic and national identity claims’ (2001: 8). Consequently emulating distaste from sociologists to credit language with significant power in a national identity. In a similar sense, de Vries notes that, in relation to a language community, ‘social scientists have generally ignored the systemic properties of language’ (1991: 39), thus, concurrently suggesting with May, a disagreement from the social sciences over the role of language in terms of identity and national identity. Similarly, circa the French revolution, the concept
The American class system is divided into three sets of social categories: upper class, middle class, and lower class. These class divisions are determined based on an individual’s status and power in the society and may also be determined through an individual’s education, occupation, and income. Having a divided society based on social and economic status leads to the formation of different conversational styles. The use of standard or nonstandard English dialects often reflect an individual’s social class and it will vary according to the social group one is categorized. Language is affected by the social structure because individuals will differ from one another in the way an individual speak. Being divided by
Language and ethnicity are known to be closely intertwined (Giles & Coupland 1991). However, prior to analyzing interrelation between language and ethnicity I faced the problem of identifying the concept of ‘ethnicity’ itself. Thus, Fishman (1997: 327) points out that ‘ethnicity’ like other notions it is in a close association with, i.e. ‘race’, ‘people’, ‘nation’, ‘nationality’, is not “an exact scientific term”. Therefore it is not clearly defined and thus is open to interpretations (Ibid). In my search I came across a number of rather vogue explanations, and the most common aggregated dictionary definition of ‘ethnicity’ is ‘a belonging to a particular social group that has a common national or cultural tradition’ (MacMillan Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, etc.). Dictionary of Cultural Literacy does single out and include language into the ethnicity definition saying that it is an “identity with or membership in a particular racial, national, or cultural group and observance of that group's customs, beliefs, and language”. However, is language always an inevitable part of one’s ethnicity or the ethnicity of a group? Definitely, the most understandable case of interrelation between language and ethnicity is the one when a person is born and lives on a specific territory which historically had one dominant ethnos and one dominant language, so ethnicity is predetermined by close bound between language and territory (Fishman 1997). Thus, Tabouret-Keller (1997) gives an example of a school boy from Belize who identifies himself as Belizean because he was born in that country, he lives there and also is a native speaker of its Creole language. But there are two more cases when interrelation of ethnicity and...
This paper is primarily intended to present some major considerations about bilingualism and bilingual education from a sociolinguistic perspective. In first instance, I will deal with some of the definitions of these terms placing them along the continuum since the high complexity of the issues. Also, some features of individual and social bilingualism will be pointed out, and some of the most common effects on individual and on communities will be presented. Finally, a reflection upon a kind of ‘unnatural’ bilingualism is put forward.