The language-social identity relationship is very complicated, with languages being non-neutral and carrying cultural tenets whose roots trace back to specific social backgrounds. It ensures one cannot extrapolate on people or groups by analyzing their language behaviour. Language and identity scholars are usually cautious about assuming anything about national characteristics in an ethnic group, only using linguistic criteria. For instance, some African Americans speak African American English (AAE). Still, some linguists interpret AAE as a sign of the Black identity. At the same time, that is not entirely true, as some African Americans do not speak AAE and do not use the same dialect, as there is a diversity in socioeconomic status, education level, and regional differences.
In addition, Asian Americans demonstrate multiple patterns of linguistic diversity, such as migration, language acquisition, and loss of language. Some Asian Americans who come to the USA as children live in households where two languages (English and their heritage languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean) are spoken. Some others are the children of immigrants, who might speak different and heritage languages (Heller et al., 2014). The offspring’s generation may not retain the heritage language and instead opt for English or other languages that respond more to their needs. Hence, there is no such thing as “Asian American English” nor any unified Asian American linguistic identity that can be assigned to all Asian Americans.
Latinos and Hispanic Americans contribute equally to linguistic diversity since the term “Hispanic/Latino” embraces language(s) and dialects from various countries. Spanish tends to be the most familiar language associated with Latin American heritage. Still, some people of Latin American heritage speak Portuguese, Quechua, or other native languages. This diversity is added to the fact that many U.S. Hispanics/Latinos have been settled for generations, reaching their second, third, and fourth-generation immigrant status with various levels of Spanish and English language use (Heller et al., 2014). Given these, the ‘language-specific’ affiliation of these two groups, including Asian Americans and Latinos, indicates the limitedness of connecting language to ‘race’ or ethnicity.
Besides, the notion of suppressing languages based on race is, as we know, controversial, as it is divisive and goes against the theories in linguistics, which hold that all languages, by their nature, belong to the same category. Many linguists hold the view that this division of language has a negative aspect through language, which has a consequential effect in shaping perceptions and categorizations of people and serves to construct social identity (Heller et al., 2014). As a result, the social implication of linguistic usage is known to be more significant than grammatical accuracy in education, media, advertising, commerce, and politics.
In conclusion, the relationship between language, identity, and socially constructed categories like “race” and ethnicity varies, and It is not easy to generalize or to associate the whole race or population ethnicity with one particular language or dialect or even another way around, thus that may be ultimately just a way of defining people. By including the sociolinguistic dimensions of race, social class, ethnicity, and nationality in language research, we could have a fuller picture of how such a pervasive phenomenon as language interplays not only with but also impacts these much broader areas of social identity.
References
Heller, M., Pujolar, J., & Duchêne, A. (2014). Linguistic commodification in tourism. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(4), 539–566. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12082
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