Social Identity - Essay Example

SOCIAL IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE 2007 SOCIAL IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE Language is a great achievement of human beings that make them differ from other creatures on the Earth. It is only a system of sounds, but its power is very strong. It can be explained because language expresses much more that words signify. It expresses the way individuals situate themselves in relationship to others, the way they group themselves, the powers they claim for themselves and the powers they stipulate to others. People use language to indicate social status, which groups they are belong and which groups they are not.

Overall people use language to create and withhold role relationships between individuals and between groups in such a manner that the linguistic varieties used by a community form a system that corresponds to the structure of the society. Today the communicative society becomes international and the role of foreign languages arises.The language using allows a speaker not only to express but to create a representation of himself in relation to others with whom he is cooperating. To show a respect is an aspect of the broader relationship between power and language.

Power is the degree to which one companion is able to control the behavior of the other. There are many personal characteristics that are potential bases of power in relationships between people they are: physical strength, age, wealth, sex, profession, or institutionalized role in the church, government, or family.. Another important degree of relationship in sociolinguistic cooperation is solidarity. It has reciprocal linguistic forms and creates the relationship of solidarity in the contrast to power.

Using non-solidary forms express distance and formality, while solidary forms express intimacy and familiarity. Solidarity can be achieved in cooperation where communicators share some common attribute - for instance, attendance at the same school, work in the same profession, membership in the same family and others. In order to be a success communicator in other country a person needs to know a language of that country and its peculiarities, in this case it concerns power and solidarity in communication expressed by wordsEach member in a community has several groups with which he probably wants to identify.

Every identity that a person takes on is associated with a number of approximate verbal and nonverbal forms of expression. There are certain linguistic forms that will conduct each identity. People create their linguistic systems so as to resemble those of the groups with which from time to time they wish to identify. So we can say that a person participates in many different speech communities, which sometimes coincides and will vary according to time, place, situation, and interlocutors. Because every individual has a range of social identities, so a speech community, as a whole, has different roles and identities for all of the different subgroups within the community.

The range of linguistic varieties expressed by these relationships is called the communicative repertoire. This repertoire can include different languages, different regional or social dialects, different registers, and different channels of communication (oral, written, manual). Language can serve as a symbol of association on several levels. On the national level, language attachment can serve an important political function. On a local level, language is a symbol of attachment to a community.

Foreign language is a part of communicative repertoire. While a person learns foreign language he makes his overview wider because he learns the social structure, culture, appropriate linguistic forms. So with this he extends his social identity. Knowledge of some language allows person to enter different communicative societies, and it is very important while migrating. For the community as a whole, socialization through language learning creates conformity to social norms and dispatches the culture of the community.

Language gives people a chance to construct themselves as social beings, to tell about who they are and to find own place in the society. To make this in the world size foreign language is used. REFERENCESGumperz, J (1972).The Speech Community, London Penguin