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Delgado, Ashley

Professor Batty

English 28

8 November 2017

Why am I who I am?

Do you feel like your language made 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 main one is our language. Language helps develop a sense of

our identity by allowing us to build a character through it. Language allows us to identify

ourselves to others through it.

Often times others 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 them 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 express

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 was identified as an American even by her own family

when she went 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 didn't

understand her Spanish rhyming.

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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. However, 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

different 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 languages, only to be able to please others and alter 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, 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 leaving her
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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

when we speak allowing us to be easily identified to others and to ourselves.

Work 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

Today, Sussex Publishers, 21 Nov. 2014, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dreaming-

freud/201411/how-much-does-the-language-we-speak-shape