The readings for this week focused on how an individual’s identity is influenced by language abilities and vice versa. These chapters and articles explore issues of group membership, the effects of linguistic competence on cross-cultural communication, and the effects of language on social and individual identity construction. Hall utilizes interactional sociolinguistics to claim that identity is always changing yet still subject to the bounds and influences of surrounding culture. Both Holliday et al. and Peirce take this idea a step further to examine the ways in which language and power structures co-exist and affect students as they acquire a new language. Peirce tells of female language learners who reframe power relationships and claim the right to speak despite the power imbalance in the dominant culture. She claims that the key to their success was dependent on investment rather than motivation.
As I completed the readings this week, I felt overwhelmed by the realization that no language, speaker, or listener can be truly “culture free.” As Hall states, “in our every communicative encounter we are always at the same time carriers and agents of culture” (46). This means that every time I greet a friend, meet a stranger, or smile at someone in line at the grocery store, I am operating under specific cultural assumptions, exhibiting cues that point to these assumptions, and spreading my culture to others. Yet at the same time I spread my own culture through communication, others are doing the same thing. I find this fact both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. I am encouraged to realize that my identity is not fixed, so communication with others exposes me to assumptions and perspectives that I may find useful. I am free to pick up pieces of other cultures that I value as I construct my own identity. However, on the flip side, I am discouraged to recognize the negative aspects of culture that can be disseminated through communicative encounters. Particularly in the United States, language is viewed as a defining aspect of culture, so non-native speakers of English are often otherized and viewed as inferior. These attitudes can be communicated either directly or indirectly through communication and cause language learners to occupy a second-rate social position. Peirce presents Eva as an example of this situation: “Eva accepted the subject position immigrant; she accepted that she was not a legitimate speaker of English....she assumed that if people treated her with disrespect, it was because of her own limitations” (24). Rather than encouraging Eva to develop a multicultural identity, the cultural communication of her coworkers took away her right to speak.
As an English teacher, I want to develop sensitivity to these experiences that my students might go through. I am fascinated with the idea Holliday et al. present about language learners experiencing a phase of loss (loss of agency, loss of former identity, loss of primary language, etc.) prior to reconstructing a new identity that they can use to respond to their new culture. However, at the same time, I am deeply saddened by the thought that students may view this transformation into a multicultural identity as a loss of oneself instead of an “adding to” of oneself. Although I have experienced being a racial, religious, cultural, and linguistic minority at various points in my life, I have always come from a culture of power (white, middle-class, American) which makes it hard for me to truly empathize with the struggles my students face. Understanding more about the connections between language and culture allows me to think more critically about what I communicate to students, as well as how I respond to them. I want to continue to develop this understanding in order to successfully care for my students and teach them to use language in a way that encourages, not discourages, their social agency, multicultural identities, and right to speak.
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