Belonging To Language

Language plays a significant role in defining who we are. It is a method of communication in a structured and conventional way. “Language reinforces feelings of social superiority or inferiority; it creates insiders and outsiders” (p. 242) states Robert MacNeil (2012) in his article “English Belongs to Everybody”.

Language is a very import part in our life, we carry it with us through all the steps, processes, moments experiences of our life, language built us and make us grow and the most important thing is that it grows with us, changes, modifies itself, and becomes more appropriate and specific. As we pointed out language help us to create and understand the world around us, gives meaning to everything and gives birth to emotions and feelings; a world without language would be meaningless and very lonely. Language it’s what help us grow up, the more we learn through it, the more we desire to experience and study in deep, leading us to new prospective, opening our mind to more specific and deep concepts, ideas, projects, goals. We really can’t

For instance, a man in Paris may not understand the language of someone in Marseilles, Quebec, Guadeloupe, or Martinique, however all of these men in these different countries speak the same common language, French. In terms of the “Black Language”, the origin can be traced to the times of slavery. Through circumstances, ideas and inventions are created. In creating this all-so-foreign but relative language, others feel left out. To be left out of a group project and sit aside can be at times uneasy. So for non-black races, the lingo that surrounds the black language can be appealing. Baldwin also explains language as something that “comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey.” To survive and thrive is a huge factor in life, but when dealing with people of different backgrounds, difficulty arises. Communication is key, so in order to live in peace and as a whole, the “Black Language” was created by the different African tribes in order to

The Webster Dictionary defines the word “language” as “the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other as well as any one of the systems of human language that are used and understood by a particular group of people” (Webster Dictionary). If language is a tool dedicated as a communication source to understand one another, why is the way certain people talk being neglected and marked as not an actual language? Language has evolved into more than just words being expressed through our voices, but has converted into a weapon used to ridicule and attack other dialects due to how different and unorthodox a particular language may be. James Baldwin in “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell me, What is?” argues that “Black English” was a form of the African American community’s own dialect of the English language, and neglecting the language as its own contradicts the definition of the word “language” itself. Bell hooks explores and points out the class differences within our society and not just within our colleges major universities, pointing out how in which assimilation is not inevitable and not required wherever an individual enters. Our own stories and the way we present ourselves through our words should not be limited to a certain form; in “F for Book Report,” R. Zamora Linmark endorses the linguistic power to represent ourselves anyway we like and our own language shouldn’t be

Until you get off of an airplane in a foreign country, do you really understand how important language is to your everyday life and what language is? I personally did not have this realization until I traveled to France the past summer not knowing more than a handful of French words.

As Rita Mae Brown stated, "Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides." As humans, we tend to look through language and not realize how much influence it holds. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, " The limits of my language means the limits of my world." We see this is true because a limited scope on language causes challenges of cultural translation, a struggle and misunderstanding between generations and a lack of self identity. Language is widely associated with just being a means of communication, but language goes beyond its definition. Language is what defines, binds and separates cultures. Language is what creates one's identity and connects one to who they are and where they are from.

Although there is no official language in the United States, the English language is the most widely spoken. Language helps to shape our identities, define and limit our expectations of the world around us and who we are. You might ask yourself, how does our language shape our identities and influence our perceptions of the world? Through language, we are able to make meaning, understand, and define ourselves. We are able to communicate what we feel, our ideas, our hopes, and our dreams with others who can respond to our feelings and thoughts. However, our choice of words cannot always capture what we are feeling to the full extent.

Cultural Linguistic Appropriate Services standard number two applies to my employer because it utilizes education and training to ensure employees comprehend importance of cultural care. The organization allocates funds toward continuing education. For example, our facility uses a program called HealthStream; hence, a computer based program that allows medical staff to keep current on policies through instructive material (Premier Health, 2013). Also, my employer has a diversity office that provides all affiliated branches educational material on diversity. Employees gain knowledge on competencies and the ability to comprehend multicultural perceptions (Premier Health, 2014). I think one way to improve care is to address cultural diversity in the monthly staff meetings. Prior to this assignment, I did not know where to locate diversity information at my facility. Sometimes, the people do not take the proper amount of time to read the slides on HealthStream, so mandating a yearly diversity training session,

Language change happens every day. New words are constantly being added and new dialects are forming. People have always argued about the causes of language change and tried to control the changes that occurred but ultimately they accomplished nothing. Languages changes and spread as a result of the people who use it daily. African American English and California English are both examples of the different ways language can change. People try to resist the changes in their language because they do not want to see it change. Language change is a natural process that can be affected by others but never stopped. This course has done an excellent job explaining how language change starts and spreads.

This source addresses multiple questions regarding the writing center working with “language 2” students, such as if they should use the same methods with language 2 students that they use with English speaking students that have a lot of issues with writing. It explains that not all language 2 students have the same issues with writing and that each student has a unique situation that should be treated with care and attention. Their overall goal is to see what happens when language 2 writers and tutor work together when the proper training is involved. This source helps expand my research by providing more questions and solutions to the common issues between tutors and “language 2” writers. It gives both the tutor and writers perspective and

Have you ever listened to someone from another country speak English? A lot of times, people speaking a second language will pronounce things a little differently than native speakers, or they will talk at a different rhythm. Languages have their own pace, places where you expect people to pause or speed up or articulate more clearly. We call this part of language an accent. People speaking a secondary language may have a foreign accent, while those speaking a native tongue have a local accent. Music is a lot like this. Musical rhythms tend to have natural accents, emphases on certain notes within a meter. Just like fitting in with a new culture requires learning their accent, accents are essential to understand musical conversation.

In today’s society, it is essential that one knows more than one language to be very well qualified in acquiring jobs. However, learning a new language is not an easy task. One must be dedicated and be fully immersed to be fluent at it later on. There are certain grammatical rules that exists in one language but not in the others. Grammatical gender, for an example, is present in various languages around the world, including German. In the other hand, there is the English language which does not possess the use of gender grammar, specifically definitive article “the” and indefinite articles “a/an” in English, and “der/die/das” and “ein/einer/ein” in German. Der/ein is the gender grammar for masculine words, die/einer for feminine, and das/ein for neutral. However, these article could change depending if the sentence is describing the noun being presented is either genitive, dative, or accusative, turning them to either des/dem/den or eines/einem/einen. Despite such complex article rule, German and English are both Indo-European languages that have several cognate words, which could be beneficial for English speakers learning the language.Another interesting idea is whether bilinguals of English and Tagalog, which is an Austronesian language, would have such limitation in being fluent to the third language because of the article rules. It would be interesting to see if

* In the educational field, the teaching learning cycle is a model used in contemporary teaching in both school and adult educational settings. Rothery (1996 in Derewianka & Jones 2012, pg 43) who originally developed the model used this to aim at disadvantaged children for teaching literacy and writing in the KLA (Key learning areas) who were from socially disadvantaged areas. Over time the model has been phased across other areas of the English language such as listening, speaking, reading as well as writing. The key involvement of the teacher also known as ‘expert other’ in the teaching learning cycle is guiding the learner to understand key concepts in academic literacy through use of scaffolding strategies to transform students

“Hello” – an expression or gesture used as a greeting – is one of the words that can distinguish the language characteristics of the following three subjects interviewed for this project. Schumann’s Acculturation model may help explain the retention of the subjects’ second language acquisition. In summary, the Acculturation Model consists of two groups of variables leading to acculturation: social and affective variables. Social variables are those that combine between two social groups who are constantly in contact with each other. Affective variables are those that a person experiences on the individual level and can influence language acquisition. Both groups of variables are influential factors when it comes to the general acculturation – defined as “the social and psychological integration of the learner with the target language group”. The following project gives applicable examples of Schumann’s social and affective variables and how they influence Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Although theory suggests that subjects will acquire or retain SLA skills similarly, the subjects questioned support Schumann and how society and the environment influence personal endeavors when it comes to first and second language skills.

In line with the trend of globalization and the growing recognition of language as resource, English as an international language has increasingly attracted ESL learners across the world to study in the United States. While international ESL learners collectively contribute to the diversity of education on the macro level, they bring their distinctive identities into each classroom on the micro level. Situated in a multicultural learning environment, learners constantly represent and negotiate their identities through classroom interaction with other participants. Investigating participants’ identities is significant because it not only provides valuable insights of applying humanistic education principles to ESL teaching and designing (Elias & Marriam, 2005), but informs teachers of potential chances and barriers that particular individuals or groups confront (Gutowska, 2014). In this paper, I analyze a three-minute classroom discourse to demonstrate how participants’ identities can be constructed, negotiated, and reconstructed through interaction in an intermediate-level adult ESL classroom.