Chapter 6: Language and Cultural Identity

SLIDE 2:
Today we´re going to talk about the relationship between everyone`s cultural identity and their
language. We are going to cover a couple of subjects related to this main concepts.

SLIDE3:
To begin, we must understand what actually is cultural identity.
We can draw a concept by mentioning the aspects that compose it. For example, identity is an
abstract idea. Also, it is a product of the collective imagery; which means that it is and idea that
we imagine socially together. There is no objective identity, just what we imagine it is, as any
abstract reality.
Identity for itself is the ensemble of characteristics that define one person.
Very often these characteristics are group related, which it is to say that we can draw someone`s
identity by listing characteristics like her skin color, her profession, her age, her religion, etc.
These are all group related characteristics. Each one of these connect the person to a certain
group of human beings.
To define cultural identity is basically to identify a person as a member of a cultural group.
But what is culture?
Well, culture can be defined as a set of ways of life and customs of a certain social group in a
moment in time. All these set of ways of life and customs are intertwined with the language that
they use.
So, language is deeply related to cultural identity.
Often, we can quickly identify a person with a culture by the way they look, act and talk. With
that information we can also assume or predict other aspects such as how important they
perceive themselves in the social hierarchy or how we perceive them.
The way a person speaks gives a mayor hint on their cultural identity and so, their pride of
belonging.

SLIDE 4:
But now, how can we determine the belonging of a person to a particular group?
In the past, before globalization, it was easier to associate a person to a group with a unique
cultural identity, but connections in today`s world are infinite, therefore it is far more
complicated to identify an individual with just one cultural identity.
Let`s see the variated criteria that can be use by social studies to define group identities:
On one hand we can consider race. But a person can be identified to different races depending
on where she was born (which lead us to the connection between nation and race), who are her
parents, her physical appearance, etc.
The same person can say “I am Italian” because she was born there; “I am German” because
both of her parents are descendants of German people; “I am Austrian” because the components
of her physical appearance point to that.
And this case is with a person with both parents having the same ascendants.
Imagine the complexity of race in a person whose parents are from different ethnicities, let’s
say: a mother who was born in India, whose father was English and whose mother was
Pakistani, and a father born in the U.S.A. whose mother was Korean and his father Mexican.
What race does this particular person belongs to?
The genes don´t lie, but they are infinite.

SLIDE 5:
Now what if we consider space instead of genes?
It is complicated as well. Let’s take Americans for example. Leaving aside the dualism of the
ethnonym, given the fact that it could mean a person who comes from a country or an entire
continent, we can hardly put an etiquette on someone’s culture by saying he is American
(coming from the U.S.A.).
The United States of America could be an extreme example of dissonance between region and
identity, but in today`s complex social world, communities are highly diverse.
The region of Cannes in France has the biggest English community in the country, and some of
its cities have a very varied population. A kid can go to a school and have friends that know
either Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, or Dutch (besides, of course, English). And these
kids may not have come from countries where that`s the official language, but only be sons and
daughters of parents who came from these countries.
Regionality does not define cultural identity.

On the other hand, let’s say Monica has an Italian Passport but she was born in Argentina, and
not even her grandparents came from Italy but her great-grandparents. Can she consider herself
Italian? In a sense, yes. She may have the rights as any other Italian citizen, but does she know
how to cook calzone? Does she drink ristretto in the afternoon while chatting with her friends in
a little coffee where the bartender responds to the name of Giusseppe? Or does she drink mate
instead, like 95% of Argentinian population and has never lived outside the South American
Continent?
If she can answer “yes” to the las question and “no” to the previous two, Monica may have an
Italian citizenship but sha can hardly consider herself as Italian.
That is to say that not even national identity can be clear and determinant to draw a line on
cultural identity.

SLIDE 6:
Continuing with the example of Monica we can add another question: Does she speak Italian?
As many of Argentinian descendants of Italian immigrants from the nineteenth century, she
probably doesn’t.
But even if she was able do it, given the past of time, her Italian would be very different from
the one spoken in Italy or Malta.
Monica`s Spanish is also very different from the one spoken in Spain, as centuries has passed
from the initial colony.
If she happens to move from Argentina to Spain, will find that, as years go by, her Spanish will
slowly differ from the Argentinian dialect. When decades have past, she will have a Spanish
much more similar to the Castilian one, than from the Rioplatense.
That is because languages are alive and they evolve. That’s why Spanish is not longer Latin.
And that’s also why it is very hard to associate one language to one culture.

SLIDE 7:
As an abstract idea, and very hard to precise in practical terms, cultural identity can be confused
or distorted by another ideas, particularly, preconceptions.
Monica can hold an Italian citizenship but she doesn’t conduct herself as “typical Italian” we
will conclude she is not Italian.
This idea of the “typical Italian” responds to the concept that the individuals of a nation have the
same customs and manners, and they can manifest in a narrow spectrum of it if they are going to
call themselves members of the group.
Or in other words, we hold cultural stereotypes.
For example: Italian grandmothers cook excellent pasta; Asians are next level smart, Germans
are hardworking, Swiss are perfectly precise, Irish are very likely to get drunk.
These portraits, these stereotypes, are so strong that we generalize it. As to say:
All Italian grandmothers cook excellent pasta; All Asians are next level smart, All German are
hardworking, All Swiss are perfectly precise, All Irish are very likely to get drunk.
So, we can hear conversations like this:
-My grandmother is Italian.
-Oh, you must have enjoyed SO much eating at her house.
Or comments like this:
-Yes, he is German, but he´s extremely lazy.
- I am Irish, I know a million toast.
-Akina doesn’t look Asian, she`s maybe the worst in mathematics 101.
This comments sound natural to us because we share preconceptions of how individuals of a
cultural group behave. And when an individual of a particular group acts in a way that doesn’t
match with our cultural stereotypes, we find it odd. We can go as far as saying:
-Pff, common, you the opposite of punctual, you are not Swiss.
SLIDE 8:

Stereotypes can manifest primarily in three different ways:

First. Societies build their own classifications of ethnicities. A person born in Occident is more
likely to have a very simplistic way of categorize oriental ethnicities. For example, by looking at
someone`s appearance a Mexican girl can say the other person is Moroccan, but she might be
unable to say if its Arabic (race originated in the Arabian Peninsula) or Berber (inhabitants if
North Africa since ancient times).
Second. By building their own classifications, societies are not consistent on the same criteria.
We can identify a person as Korean for his facial features, and another one as English or
American for the particular way in which they speak English.
Third. Complexity in the identification of a culture by a language. This Mexican girl can
identify someone else as French for listening the way he talks, while consider herself a “Latina”,
as a member of Spanish speaker cultures. Forgiving the fact that “Latinos” are all those who
speak any language derived from Latin, such as French.

SLIDE 9:
Other aspect to consider in the relationship between language and cultural identity, is the cases
of immigration.
In this cases language can be an indicator of stigma, a motive to segregation, a reason to be
ashamed, etc.
Imagine a little kid, coming from a family running away from the Germany of the Nazis in the
first half of the past century. This kid is most likely to be bullied at school if he dares to speak in
German. So, he probably will make a huge effort to speak the language of the country as well
and as soon as possible. This is the main reason why descendants of German parents in Brazil or
Argentina were never taught German and their language was lost after the first immigrates.
In other scenarios, language became a symbol of resistance. A way of keeping the richness of
a cultural heritage alive.
But ironically, for the minority to preserve their language and everything that it carries, they
must learn the language of the majority and be assure that some of them escalate to good social
positions.
This was the case with Guaraní, the natural language of the indigenous community of Paraguay.
Today, Guaraní is included in bilingual education through the whole country and it has been
kept alive due the fact that someone of the indigenous community learnt Spanish and promote a
linguistic policy of bilinguism.
In this scenario, a bilingual member of the indigenous community can perform language
crossing to identify himself as a member of both cultures.
For example, he can be accompanied by his indigenous friends and talk with a Spanish speaker
alternating both languages, so his friends don’t feel left behind and the Spanish speaker is
challenged by the man`s linguistic superiority.
SLIDE 10 and 11:

Speaking of symbols of resistance and identity, we should consider the cases in which
separatism enforces a strong defense of a particular language associated with a national
community.
The case of Cataluña is particularly strong in Spain. The complexity of languages in the country
is a little high, having Spanish as an official language through the whole country, and different
official languages in the different provinces, such as Basque or Galician or Valencian. Every
province has a bilingual policy in education and it is demanded to have a certificate in the
province`s particular language if one is to work on the public sector.
But Cataluña stands out. It`s policy of separatism is showed in the dominant use of Catalan for
everyone everywhere, and the refuse to speak in Spanish (a language every Catalan knows very
well) to anyone coming from another part of Spain.
The society of Cataluña consider herself a whole different nation than the Spanish one, and the
linguistic policy is one of her stronger weapons to fight for separatism.

SLIDE 12:

As we have seen, language can be a strong indicator of identity in any particular culture.
Therefore, linguistic policies search to reinforce the association of one language one culture.
One way of doing this is the contribution made by the public sector to an “official way of
speaking and writing the language”, that is to say: the standard language.
The standard is created artificially, responding to academies that protect the better use of the
idiom, and used by television, editorials, newspapers, radio, etc. Also, it is the one taught to
students in school and the holder of the “norm”, or “the proper way to speak and write” a
determinate language.
This norm is created by academies and the applied by official channels of communication and
public education.
Naturally, every dialect that differs from the standard has the stigma of not being proper and so
his speakers are consider part of the low pyramid in the social hierarchy. They are often
identified as uneducated and poor.
Thus, speakers of a dialect can be easily influenced to lose their natural way of speaking and use
the standard instead.

SLIDE 13:
The social aspect of a language goes beyond its pragmatism. It is a sign of membership, an
identifier. So, it is natural that languages become weapons manipulated to serve political
purposes.
Every time a nation has tried to destroy another, has attacked its language. And every time a
nation has resist, it kept on using it.

SLIDE 14:

This lead us to the concept of imperialism.

A modern non-violent form of colonialism is the wide expansion of American culture through
the media that uses its standard language.
This is what we call linguicism, or the promulgation of global ideologies by the expansion of
one language.
Imagine if after the Cold War the Russian could have their language and media spread through
the whole world, just like the USA did. Today we could have a very different narrative of the
world.
We can only imagine. The causes and consequences of linguistic imperialism, which is a type of
linguicism, can only be visualize to some extent.
For now, what we can know for sure is that languages are one of the strongest aspects to
determine cultural identity. So strong, that when a language dies with its last speaker, we
consider a culture to be lost.