Name : Atifah Khoiriyah

Reg. Number : 1910732012

Course : Introduction to Sociolinguistics

Language Learning, Identity, and Speech Community

Basic concepts

1. Language Learning
Language learning is the learning of any language. There are two types of language learning: First
language acquisition (L1 Learning) refers to the way children learn their native language. Second
Language Acquisition (SLA) refers to the process of learning any language after the first language.

According to Steve Kaufman in his video, in learning a new language, the more we think our identities
or cultures are unique, and we were tied up in this sense of who we are, the more difficult it is to
learn another language because to learn another language, you have to be one of them, a part of
them, and you have to project yourself into that community.

Language learning is based on three things:

1) Your attitude. You have to think that you can do it, you want to do it, and you like doing it
2) Time. The amount of time you spend to learn. It depends on your attitude as well.
3) Developing the ability to notice that you may not to cling to your own identity. You have to try to
go out of your comfort zone to enjoy to learn another language and culture.

2. Identity
In general, identity is divided into three types:
1) Individual Identity
Individual identity is the identity that someone builds about themselves, influenced by
various factors, such as self-esteem, a person's social identity, and the role a person plays in
society. In the relation with language, language marks the identity of an individual by seeing the
way of she/he speaks such as accent, dialect, etc. The language of any individual will also include
particular register according to his or her gender, kinship, class, region, religion, profession and,
etc. For example, we can recognize a soldier, advocate, mechanic, teacher, child, gender, or any
other identity through their language or idiolect.

2) Ethnic Identity
Phinney (1990) defines ethnic identity as “a dynamic, multidimensional construct that refers to
one’s identity, or sense of self as a member of an ethnic group”. For example, people might
identify their race as Aboriginal, African American or Black, Asian, European American or White,
Native American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Māori, or some other race. Ethnicity refers
to shared cultural characteristics such as language, beliefs, practices, and ancestry.

3) Social Identity
Social identity groups are usually defined by some social, physical, and mental characteristics of
individuals. The examples of social identities are gender, race/ethnicity, social
 class/socioeconomic status, (dis)abilities, sexual orientation, and religion/religious beliefs. Thus,
we can identify ourselves according to religion or where we're from (Asian American, Southerner,
New Yorker), political affiliation (Democrat, Environmentalist), vocation (writer, artist,
neurosurgeon), or relationship (mother, father, great-aunt), and so on.

Language is an essential part of our identity to know the world around us. As a child we begin to
learn our mother language so that our parents can communicate with us. As we grow up, we go to
school and communicate with more people and through those people we can learn more things
around us thus giving us personality about what to do and what to not do that will build up our own
identity. Then, as we grow older, we experience many things and communicate with various people
and develop emotions, likes, dislikes, want, etc. When we get older enough, we share our wisdom
knowledge guideliness with our future generation. Thus, language helps to shape a person to learn
many things, share experiences, educate other people, and so forth. This is how language learning
affect someone's identity, how can it shape it, and make people realize what they like, what they
don’t like, and so on.

3. Speech Community
A community is a group of people who share the same activities, practices, ideas, etc. In general, a
speech community is defined as a group of people who share a common language or dialect. It refers
to all people who share a given language or dialect (Lyons, 1970). The speakers in the community
share some kind of common feeling about linguistic behavior in the community such as language
varieties, a set of grammatical rules, social structure, linguistic norms, etc. An example of speech
community is the group of English language speakers throughout the world. Another example is that
in Eastern Europe, many speakers of Czech, Austrian German, and Hungarian share rules about the
proper forms of greetings, suitable topics for conversation, and so on.