Essay On The Link Between Language And Cultural Identity

Introduction

I am interested in the link with language and identity, I find it interesting that most native English speakers are generally not multilingual and people that are multilingual most likely have English as their secondary language. I find that this may be why native English speakers don’t learn a secondary language because they don’t feel they need to. But some people may have mixed heritage, for example my heritage is predominantly English but I have family from the Basque region of Spain, so when I am asked where I from or what my heritage is I say English and Spanish, however I am not completely fluent in this secondary part of my heritage, though I don’t know if my brothers feel the same way but I do have a better grasp of Spanish than they do, I would consider myself a receiving bilingual, meaning I can read Spanish and understand it when spoken to me, but I do struggle more with the speaking of it. This led me to wonder if my better proficiency in this second language gave me stronger ties to this part of my heritage. So it led to me to the overall question of “Is there a link between language and cultural identity?” My readings however have made me realise that I was talking about a single persons view of their own personal cultural identity so my question has now changed to; “Is there link a link between language and one’s cultural identity?”

Methodology

This is an ethnographic project meaning that “as an approach to learning about the social and cultural life of individuals, communities and institutions through the researcher’s personal immersion in investigative and empathetic participation and observation research.” (Kruger, 2008:1). I decided to use a questionnaire as my main source of data collection, beca...

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... understand. For example earlier I used the term receiving bilingual, a receiving bilingual is “a person who understands two languages but who can speak only one.” (Saunders 1988: xii)

Bibliography

Barker, C and Galasiński, D. (2001). Culture and Language. In: Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis. A Dialogue on Language and Identity, London: SAGE Publications Inc. p3-4.

Kruger, Simone 2008 Ethnography in the Performing Arts

Saunders, G (1988). Bilingual Children From Birth to Teens. 2nd ed. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. p xii.

Schreuder, R and Weltens, B. (1993). The Bilingual Lexicon: An Overview. In: De Bot, K, Huebner, T, Schreuder, R and Weltens, B, The Bilingual Lexicon. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. P1-9

Soanes, C and Stevenson, A 2005, Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition revised. Oxford University Press