Review of Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages, Discourses, Cultures - Book Report/Review Example

 Book Review Review of Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages, Discourses, Cultures I chose to do a research on the Review of Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages, Discourses, Cultures so as to remind myself and my colleagues on the importance of associating oneself. The research will also help me understand on the importance brought by identity, what steps lead us to have an association or similarity to something and the various types of identities. Also the importance and origin of language, it will come out in a clear way, that language gives us a variety of identity in either gender, social, occupational or cultural aspects (Pavlenko & Norton, 2007). Introduction Language refers to the capacity of humans been able to acquire and use complex ways of communication, or the cognitive ability to learn and use systems to describe any set rules that comprise these systems. The term communication here refers to the ability to convey messages from either the sender to recipient or vice versa, through a medium. The research on language if studied scientifically, it will be referred to as linguistics (Coates & Pichler, 2011). Identity on the other hand refers to, when an idea or object resembles the original, to make it be recognized and defined. It could be social, cultural, personal or individual identity. Also, identity may refer to an individual’s expression or conception of his or her own self, to a given group, could be cultural or national identity. Thus, identities in other hand refer to distinct traits that can be found on any individual, or shared by members of a given social category (Norton, 2011). Language seems to correlate with identity in that, people in a given region speaking similar words and understand each other better can be identified to have particular cultural or social practices. This shows that, language and identity are directly in relation to each other. The idea of language tends to give someone an identity. This means that, if one learns a given language through teaching, an identity is owned to show a relationship to the social world. In language, one gets to learn, read, speak or write under the influence of power in different sites. Theoretical Background Associated with the Study There is an estimate of about 6,000 to 7,000 languages in the world, which is brought out by differences in dialects. Language originated in the time of early hominins, when they began changing their primate communication systems, acquired a way to come up with a theory of other minds and later shared their intentions. According to linguists, language resulted from an increase in brain volume as humans grew. This is best explained by some science where language is usually processed in a variety of locations within the human brain, most specially, the wernicke’s and Broca’s area. It is also believed that humans get to acquire language through social interaction from early childhood. This means if a child begins to learn a particular language, they are likely to understand better after a number of interactions with the immediate environment, this refers to the society. The child then gets to speak fluently at three, and this reflects that culture at times defines the language of an individual. Languages therefore evolve and diverse over time, and involve reconstruction when comparing modern types of languages to determine characteristics from ancestral times, where, those descending from a common ancestor become a language family. The most common languages spoken belong to Indo-European family, that is Spanish, English, Russian and Portuguese, the Sino-Tibetan family includes, Cantonese, among the many categories like Bantus in the likes of Zulu and Shona. In short, there are hundreds of languages spoken throughout, and some become extinct as others emerge (Lin, 2008). In as much as language helps in communication, it also has a number of social and cultural uses, an example, it shows social grooming, stratification and more on identity. A brief history on identity is that, from the psychological perspective, identity is more of self-image. This means how one portrays them. From the ethnic aspect, it describes the wholesomeness o f one’s self, an all round person in who they aspire to be in future as a buildup of who they were from their past. According to Weinreich’s definition, identity revolves in all aspects of the human lifecycle, be it an adolescent, young child, or an elderly as help come up with a total component of one’s occupational, gender, ethnic identities among others. Sociology on the other aspect, tries to explain on the notion of identity negotiation which may come up as a result of learning some social roles, through personal experience. The negotiation here is a process in which an individual comes to an agreement after a long struggle with themselves in the societal matters as regard to the meaning of their identity. Still with history, between the years 1902 to 1994, Erik Erikson, was among the first psychologist who took interest in identity, in terms of ‘ego’ (self), he defined it as an aspect that makes individuals unique. This means that, it separates one individual from the other, or a collection of social roles that a person may play and termed it as social or cultural identity (Paltridge, 2014). In as much as identity is experienced in all phases of the human life, but starts from childhood, those who fail to re synthesis any childhood identification, they are likely to encounter a state of ‘identity diffusion.’ Data Collection Procedures and Analysis Data is collected after case studies are presented on linguistics and how it has impacted on identity; this is done after drawing conclusions from the data. Also mixed methods of qualitative aspects and data already put in journals, literature itself are used to collect data. The idea that linguists still exist, will help in collection of primary data they may do this by visiting people who lived back then and compile some reports on language from the horse’s mouth. Analysis of the data may be done by computers in ms-excel and presented in form of charts, graphs or spreadsheets. Results Language tends to influence identity in that, those speaking and understanding each other from a given perspective, form an identity since they have a commonality between them. It is clear that as language diverse year in year out, so doe’s identity, people change their uniqueness either as individuals or in groups. This makes a correlation between the two where, people in a given region speaking similar words and understand each other better can be identified to have particular cultural or social practices (Pavlenko & Norton, 2007). In as much as language seems to be the unifying factor to identity, all sorts of identity crop up like, gender, where females and males will tend to separate themselves, in terms of physical characteristics, racial, religious, occupational or ethnic identities also have something in common, that is a particular language that makes the group appear unique from others (Labelle, 2011). Lessons Learnt Identity has evolved to be part and parcel of language and in as much as we give assumptions, language has the oldest origin, and some linguists too came up with some research and identified various types of languages that have roots, from the early days of mankind (Holmes, 2011). It is also good to remind ourselves that, if one gets to learn a particular language through writing, reading, learning and understands it better at long last, they are in a position to get some self identity, this means, they can get an association to some culture, social group, or occupation in as much as identity tends to begin at childhood times when one is three. References Block, D. (2007). Second Language Identities. London: Continuum. Chapter 2. Identities in the social sciences today (in electronic reserve) Coates, J. and Pichler, P. (eds), (2011), Language and Gender: A Reader. Second edition. Boston, MA: Wiley-Blackwellde Fina, A. (2011), ‘Discourse and identity’, in T. A. van Dijk (ed),Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Los Angeles: Sage, pp. 263- 282. Deckert, S. and Vickers, C.H. (2011), An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Society and Identity. London: Continuum. Holmes, J. (2011), ‘Social Constructionism, postmodernism and feminist sociolinguistics’, in J. Coates and P. Pichler (eds.), Language and Gender: A Reader. Second edition. Boston: Wiley- Blackwell, pp. 600-610. Jackson, J. (2014).  Introducing language and intercultural communication.Abingdon, UK: Routledge. LaBelle, S. (2011) ’Language and identity’, in A. Mooney, L. Thomas, S. Wareing, J. Stilwell Peccei, S. LaBelle, B. E. Henriksen, E. Eppler, A. Irwin, P. Pichler, P. Preece and S. Soden (eds), Language, Society and Power,Third edition (pp. 173-188).  London: Routledge (in electronic reserve) Lin, A. (ed), (2008), Problematizing Identity. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Litosseliti, L. (2006), Gender & Language: Theory and Practice. London: Hodder Arnold. Llamas, C. and Watt, D. (eds), (2010), Language and Identities.Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Norton, B. (2010), ‘Language and identity’, in N. Hornberger and S. McKay (eds). Sociolinguistics and Language Education. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, pp. 349-369. Norton, B. (2011), ‘Identity’, in J. Simpson (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics. London: Routledge, pp. 318-330. Norton, B. and Toohey, K. (2011), ‘Identity, language learning, and social change’, Language Teaching, 44, 4, 412-446. Paltridge, B. (2014). Language, identity and communities of practice. In D. Djenar, A. Mahboob and K. Cruickshank (eds). Language and Identity across Modes of Communication. Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton (in electronic reserve) Pavlenko, A., and Norton, B. (2007), ‘Imagined communities, identity, and English language learning’, in J. Cummins and C. Davison (eds.)International Handbook of English Language Teaching. New York: Springer, pp. 669-680. Sunderland, J. (2004), Gendered Discourses. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Swann, J. (2002), ‘Yes, but is it gender?’ in J. Sunderland and L. Litosseliti (eds), Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 43-67. Talbot, M. (2010), Language and Gender. Second edition. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell.   Read More