Language and Identity

INTRODUCTION

In the first part of this chapter, some basic linguistic concepts regarding the nature of language are presented, along with examples. Language is viewed as a shaper of personal and cultural identity. Language and accents may also be the means by which one group of people culturally stereotypes another, whether the two groups speak different languages or speak variations of the same language. Language is then viewed in its role of connecting individuals to each other. As people move through their day and through their lives, changing the style of their language or changing from one language to another is a natural way to express their relationships to the people with whom they interact. Finally, language is viewed in relation to other characteristics that define individuals. Languages and accents are changeable; physical and racial traits are usually not. This is an important concept when considering the situation of immigrants who relocate to a country with a language different from their own. Acquiring proficiency in the new language may not alter the way they are seen and treated by the larger society.

The second part of the chapter applies the above concepts to a larger context: the relative status of cultures throughout the world. As a result of world history, some nations and the cultures that predominate in them have acquired greater power and prestige than others. As a consequence, the languages identified with them also acquire relative status. The discussion then focuses on the situation of non-English speakers in the United States. The low status of many of these groups derives from the low status of their countries of origin and is reflected in the low status conferred on the languages they speak. The history of the United States is marked by periods of repression of immigrant and minority languages. The most recent evidence of this repression is the current official-English movement.

Examination of the rhetoric of this movement reveals its basis in anti-bilingualism, anti-bilingual education, and a melting-pot ideology. The concerns underlying the movement are legitimate: issues of national unity, equality of opportunity, and integration. However, it is argued here that the repression of non-English languages does little to resolve the problems that have fostered these concerns.

LANGUAGE AND PERSONAL IDENTITY

It is not surprising that our native language is often referred to as our "mother tongue," a term that recalls our earliest memories and influences. The term itself has different meanings. The sociolinguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (1981)hypothesizes five definitions of "mother tongue" depending on who is defining it. For the sociologist, mother tongue is the language one learns first. For the linguist, it is the language one knows best. For the sociolinguist, it is the language one uses the most. For the social psychologist, it is the language one identifies with and through which one is identified. For the lay person, it is "the language one counts in, thinks in, dreams in, writes a diary in, writes poetry in" (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981: 18).

For most Americans, there is only one language that fits all of these definitions. But a large part of the world' s population makes use of two or more languages during a lifetime. Many people grow up bilingual, perhaps because their parents are native speakers of two different languages, or because the language of their family and community differs from the regional or national language. Many others come into contact with a second or third language as a result of migration to another country. In these cases, defining one's "mother tongue" becomes more complicated. The immigrant, in particular, is often faced with a situation in which the new language begins to supplant the native one. Outside one's home and community, the new language is usually required. But in the most private of thought processes, such as the ones described in Skutnabb-Kangas' (1981) last definition, the speaker must choose between two languages. This dilemma is most acute for immigrant children, whose formative experiences are taking place in a language and culture different from the ones they have previously experienced. This is illustrated in the autobiography of the writer Eva Hoffman, who emigrated from Poland to Vancouver, Canada, at the age of 13:

As I lie down in a strange bed in a strange house – my mother is a sort of housekeeper here, to the aging Jewish man who has taken us in in return for her services – I wait for the spontaneous flow of inner language which used to be my night-time talk with myself, my way of informing the ego where the id had been. Nothing comes. Polish, in a short time, has atrophied, shriveled from sheer uselessness. Its words don't apply to my new experiences; they're not coeval with any of the objects, or faces, or the very air I breathe in the daytime. In English, words have not penetrated to those layers of my psyche from which a private conversation could proceed. (Hoffman, 1989: 107)

On her birthday, Hoffman is given a typical gift for a teenage girl, a diary. But this creates a dilemma for the young lady caught between two languages:

If I am indeed to write something entirely for myself, in what language do I write? Several times, I open the diary and close it again. I can't decide. Writing in Polish at this point would be a little like resorting to Latin or ancient Greek – an eccentric thing to do in a diary, in which you're supposed to set down your most immediate experiences and unpremeditated thoughts in the most unmediated language. Polish is becoming a dead language, the language of the untranslatable past. But writing for nobody's eyes in English? That's like doing a school exercise, or performing in front of yourself, a slightly perverse act of self-voyeurism.

Because I have to choose something, I finally choose English. If I'm to write about the present, I have to write in the language of the present, even if it' s not the language of the self. As a result, the diary becomes surely one of the more impersonal exercises of that sort produced by an adolescent girl. (Hoffman, 1989: 120–121)

This experience is not limited to immigrants. A similar dilemma faced Richard Rodriguez, a writer and lecturer of Mexican origin who grew up in a largely non-Hispanic neighborhood of Sacramento, California. He and his siblings were the only Spanish-speakers in their Catholic school. Concerned about his initial reluctance to speak English, his teachers convinced his parents to substitute their mother tongue with English when conversing with their children. The effect on Rodriguez was poignant, and echoes Hoffman's sense of loss: "The special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then. Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being...