How Does Language Affect Personal Identity

The language we use is the best indicator of who we are, individually, socially and culturally.
Language is a key element in the expression of all forms of identity, according to Linguist David Crystal “more than anything else language shows we belong, providing the most natural badge or symbol of public and private identity”. Identity is heavily influenced by social factors and can be reflected in the lexical choice and semantic distinctions that people use. In addition, the degree of individual and group identity is reinforced by the discourse and prosodic features adopted by different groups. However, language is not static and its usage may be adjusted to suit the given context of the exchange. Language, does subconsciously reveal our individual, …show more content…
Stereotypes formed by society have led to the association of different features role to each gender. Men are seen as the more dominant gender and expected to be more assertive and engage more in the public domain. According to a recent survey done by sociolinguist Janet Holmes, in a doctor-patient situation, regardless of the roles, women were more likely to be interrupted. As the subordinate gender, women are expected to be the crux of etiquette and are more facilitative and supportive in their conversational management, and according to Holmes women “focuses…on personal experiments and personal relationships, personal problems and feelings…tend to avoid criticizing people directly”. The use of the high-rising-terminal, and politeness markers (especially hedging) us evident in young female speech: ‘He goes, let’s just have dinner, ok? And I’m like, whatever’ (Teenage girl, Overheard). The use of ‘like’ dampens the following lexeme and suggests that the speaker is showing interest in the conversion. In addition, the conversation management of gay men is closely linked to that of women, in which the use of politeness markers and high rising terminal are extensive, even though their gender is not that of the stereotype. Hence, Identity through the conversational management of language expresses the features of their gender and sexual …show more content…
Under certain situations, individual may choose to reflect only certain features of their identity, or may adopt different features. Inspirational people who want to move up the social scale often use Standard English then that of their current class, in these scenario individuals are not reflecting their existing identity, rather they are projecting their desired identity. Accommodation to a certain group of people or individual during speech will increases the solidarity between the speaker and the interlocutor but does not reflect the individual identity of the speaker who undergo linguistic accommodation. In a courtroom situation, a male witness was described to have a different conversational strategy from being assertive to being more passive, and use more features of women’s speech. This change is incited by the context. As men are seen to be of the dominant gender, “females do not have the same sanctions to swear that males do” (Linguist Kristy Fagersten), and are recorded to use more intense swear words. Swearing is often associated with masculinity and a sign of toughness for male interlocutors. Under that involved the opposite gender, men were recorded to use fewer expletives. While women, during private discourse will also freely use the expletives to mark strength. Hence, Linguistic accommodation