Observations of the Relationships between Culture, Language, and Identity
Part 1: The Lead/ What you already know about the topic
This paper works from the premise that our identities are influenced directly by the culture of our formative years and development: this includes the languages we speak. From this perspective “culture” actually refers to a melee of factors: the immediate culture of one’s family, the culture of one’s neighborhood/environment, and the culture of one’s work or school. Finally, one of the dominant forces upon culture, is of course, the dominant culture of one’s nation. Essentially, culture has a tremendous influence on identity and this includes a mix of national, societal, and familial culture. Culture makes a tremendous impact on how people view themselves and their place in the world, and often the path they take in life. In similar fashion, language has just as much influence. Language impacts how we view human interaction and the appropriate means of expression. For example, in Russian culture, if someone calls you and you are busy, it’s customary to just say, “I’m busy” and hang up. In American and English cultures, it more customary to be polite, and offer up an excuse or explanation of why one can’t talk at the moment. If you even examine the different ways of identifying oneself in various languages from their literal translations into English, the distinctions are profound: My name is ___, in French we have: I call myself ___, in German we have: I am called ____ and in Russian we have: They call me _______. Even with distinct phrasal identifiers such as this can demonstrate how much language influences oneself and one’s place in the world.
Part 2: What you wanted to find out.
Essentially, my goals when engaging in this research were very modest. I wanted to determine what the most significant findings had been in this field,...
References
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Jones, R. P. (2018, January 20). Opinion | The Collapse of American Identity. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/opinion/the-collapse-of-american-identity.html
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374). It has been assumed that despite these internal cultural differences, overarching political similarities, shared history, or an interest in national diversity would be enough to unite the Canadian people under a single identity. However, Kymlicka's (2003) close examination of the national and international has illustrated that they are largely shared by most modern, Western nations. Any presumed Canadian uniqueness is largely mythical (p. 368). Of course, mythology can be
A widely quoted and interesting functioning definition has been provided by Geert Hofstede who suggests that culture should be considered as software of a person's mind. He is reported to have said that each individual possesses certain patterns and forms of contemplation, emotions and possible acting that they have probably acquired during their life (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005). Most of these patterns have been obtained through their early childhood experiences
Our country is very young and may be compared with an adolescent who feels he is powerful and at the same time is unsure of himself because he is still a child. Then there are many immigrants from many countries, and on the whole people here do not remain situated in any one location for any great length of time; they move from place to place rather frequently, thereby
Language/Identity Language and Identity A large part of culture has to do with the language that people speak. It is a unifying concept that allows a group of people to identify one another as belonging to the same group. It does matter how the group is bounded, usually more by geographical bounds than ethnic of racial, it matters more how the person related to the world through the spoken word. This paper
Language and Thinking Language is the one aspect, which distinguishes human beings from lower species of life (Faccone et al. 2000). Sternberg (1999 as qtd in Faccone et al.) lists its properties as including communication, arbitrary symbolism, regular structure, structure at multiple levels, generation and production and dynamism. Sternberg assumes that language is most likely acquired naturally from the environment where a person is raised as an infant. The stages seem
Consider the fact that the Iroquois are said not to have had a strong word for the singular "I," and that they subsequently developed what was arguably the longest lasting communal representative democracy the world has ever known. The Inuit, whose culture revolves around the arctic world, have dozens of words for snow - this sort of technical knowledge allows quick and accurate transmission of conditions and training in
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