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Delgado, Ashley
Professor Batty
English 28
8 November 2017
Our Identity
Do you feel like your language took a contribution in forming your identity? Language is
a major factor of one's whole identity it's the reason for our views in life, our personality and
who we are as a person. I believe as humans there are millions of contributions that take place
when shaping our identity but the number one is our language. Language helps develop a sense
Often times people tend to settle for the norms that the society they are surrounded by has
set for them. They might feel as if people will see that person a certain way or think of them in a
closed perspective. This often leads to the formation of a new identity. Yolanda, but her real
name no longer sounded like her own, so instead she scribbled her name for him, Joe (Alvarez
78). In the novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents one of the 4 sisters is no longer able
to retaliate herself to her white husband when they no longer speak the same language. Why?
Because she was a high class island girl from the Dominican Republic who only spoke spanish ,
but when the family moved to the United States she identified as an American even by her own
family when she goes back to visit her motherland. Having to adjust to a new life elsewhere
definitely brings change. She began to only be able to view life in an English way as her husband
Some might argue that language doesn't take a contribution when forming our identity
because it's something we should naturally be able to identify others through. But I argue
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otherwise, I believe everyone has a different way of communicating, expressing themselves and
talking. We don't all sound sound the same when speaking English we have our accents, our
tones and our tongue all differentiating from one another. In the article How to Tame A Wild
Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua helps understand why people tend to fit in to not look like an
outsider with others. Its purpose is to show how Anzaldua had to speak several languages which
included Standard English, working class and slang English, Standard Spanish, Standard
Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish dialect, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, and Pachuco
(Anzaldua 79). This broadens up the idea of how language and identity both contribute to each
other because she was forced to understand and speak these language only to be able to please
others and how they viewed her. Then comes the formation of our personality, our language
plays the important role because it helps us develop a sense of humor and a conscience.
I believe if someone can speak more than one language all of those languages define that
person's identity. Sheila Kohler is an example of this, in her blog How Much Does the
Language we Speak Shape Our Identity? she speaks of her life experience and how she
strangely found herself living with a French family at the age of 17 being a white English
speaking child from South Africa. She says, Did the fact that I learned to speak French fluently
and to some lesser degree Italian, help me to find myself? I have written of the loneliness of
finding myself in a strange French family at seventeen. Speaking a foreign language presents, of
course, many difficulties: the frustration of not being understood, and the feeling of being stupid,
reduced to a smaller vocabulary, without the familiarity with the expressions, the fine tuning of
your own language explaining how one does change when they learn a new language. Although
she quite felt lonely she ended up liking who she turned out to be. She seemed to be fine with
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leaving her past behind and adapting to her new life, forgetting thebold troublesomes. It gave her
a what she calls a disguise allowing her to form into whomever she wanted to become.
People often argue that our language is something we as humans are supposed to develop
normally. But I argue otherwise, I believe that our language identifies us. Growing up in a
hispanic household being spoken to in Spanish as my first language helped me learn who I was
growing up. I learned to speak Spanish and read it. This allowed me to be able to interact with
others. It also help me understand the culture I was a part of. Without being able to understand or
speak Spanish I would've never learned how to sing Las Maanitas or read my favorite
newspaper, El Clasificado. Being born here and attending school I was able to speak English as
well. Being able to speak Spanish and English gave me the comfort to identify myself as
Hispanic/American.
Yes of course there are many other things that take part when we are growing into our
identities like the books we read, the people we interact with or the way we dress. But language
is the number one reason for our views in life, our personalities and the way we come off as a
person to others. Theres no other language as to the one we develop, it carries a key that opens
Works Cited
Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Algonquin Books, 2013.
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Anzaldua, Gloria. Language in Gloria Anzaldua's How to Tame a Wild Tongue :: Essays
Research Papers. Free Essays, Term Papers, Research Paper, and Book Report,
www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=152000.
Kohler, Sheila. How Much Does the Language We Speak Shape Our Identity? Psychology
freud/201411/how-much-does-the-language-we-speak-shape