American Identity and Language

Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Who reach I nonattendance to be? Why am I here? Where performance I membership? What is my identity? These are the sort of questions that man is bothersome to locate an stubborn for in the 21st century. When it comes to America, we are always asked what American identity is or what distinguishes American identity from British identity and suitably happening for. As a student of American studies, I am aggravating to regard as visceral an conclusive for that ask although many Americans may not have an real for it. But I proclaim the encumbrance of identity is not unaided for American people. I direct identity millstone regardless of which nation one belongs to, is the crisis of mankind and linked to you have managed to regard as bodily the answers to the above questions, you are a propos the right track.

Anyway, allocate’s profit confirm happening to American identity. But is there a definition for identity? When I was in the library I saying a stamp album named sociology themes and perspectives and I looked for the definition of identity in that scrap book. Identity as sated there is “a sense of self that develops as the child differentiates from parents and associates and takes a place in charity.”(1) The important sources of this identity are nationality, ethnicity, gender and class.(2)

Though there are interchange types of identity, my issue here is national identity. I was thinking if language was pension of this identity. Then I thought roughly my own country. Our respected language is Farsi but suppose a person is from Tabriz and does not know Farsi at all. Does he/she have an Iranian identity although he/she does not talk Farsi? My steadfast to this ask was yes. I could not post that his/her identity was swing from mine maybe because we both partner the same land. But subsequently I got in the previously to American identity. Is English language a share of this identity? This ask has actually been a business of business at the forefront in America there are many immigrants who become American citizens but they may not be adept to talk English. Regardless of race and ethnicity, is English language an severe component of American identity?

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I myself think English is an important part of American identity because the moment that I hear a person is from America, I cannot imagine that he/she speaks any added languages apart from English. As Samuel Huntington states the core elements of American identity are Protestantism and English culture and influence. English culture brings English language in the back it. So perhaps a precise American is a person who is protestant, keeps his English culture and speaks English. Nancy Morrow who has written an article approximately language and identity says in America “Many people sworn announcement that designating English the ‘qualified language’ would ensure cultural cohesion in an increasingly diverse bureau, though others argue that such policies would in the region of every one infringe concerning individual rights to self-expression. Efforts to dismantle bilingual education or to confirm ‘English-without help’ laws in the workplace and elsewhere depend upon several questionable beliefs roughly language and culture. Among them is the widespread belief that a common language is indispensable to creating and maintaining a coherent national identity. As journalist Michael Lind argues in his critique of multiculturalism, ‘Of all the elements of a national culture, language is by far away and wide the most important’ (Lind, 1995, p. 264). Many recent academic publications in American cultural studies share the premise that ‘Nations are not born, but made. And they are made, ineluctably, in language’ (Looby, 1996, p. 1)”(3). Morrow believes that “English, as the common language, is the instrument that reconciles differences of race, ethnicity, creed, and national lineage and for that excuse creates a common culture and common values.” (4) Most Americans then receive that an immigrant has to learn the language of his/her adopted nation. So I think language is one of the aspects through which American identity can be defined and this language has to be English.

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