Transcript Language and Identity

Language Development and Identity
Learning Objectives
• To analyze our own emotional connections with the languages we
speak.
• To connect how personal and social identity is also related to the
languages we speak.
• To analyze where schools may exclude children and families based
on language.
• To explore ways to be make schools more inclusive.
Introduction
We all speak many languages, even if we consider ourselves
monolingual. We speak differently to people depending on their
age; their social status; how well we know them; whether they are
family, friends or colleagues from work; etc.
We may also speak different languages with how we communicate
artistically through the visual arts, through music, through dance.
We may associate different feelings with how we speak to others
and with our identities.
For those of us who are bilingual or multilingual in terms of national
languages or dialects we speak, we also have different feelings
and identities associated with these languages.
Where I feel language
1. Think of the different languages you know, which are in anyway
important to you. You do not have to speak them fluently; you
can just understand them passively.
2. Draw a figure of yourself or use worksheet “My languages”.
Assign a different color to the different languages you speak and
locate where they reside in the figure of your body. They can be
anywhere in your body.
3. Think of the emotions you feel in those different languages in
different parts of your body. If you communicate through different
means or differently with different people, then also locate where
those types of communication reside.
Language and identity
Our various group memberships, along with the values,
beliefs and attitudes associated with them, are significant
to the development of our social identities in that they
define in part the kinds of communicative activities and
the particular linguistic resources for realising them to
which we have access.
These identities become associated with particular sets
of linguistic actions for realising the activities, and with
attitudes and beliefs about them (Hall, 2012: 32).
Language and identity
• How do each of the languages you identified in the
drawing shape part of your identity?
• What identities (national, ethnic, youth, professional,
parenthood, etc.) do each of these languages
represent for you?
• How did these identities develop? Have they changed
over the years? Has the language you use changed?
• Have any of these languages made you feel excluded
from another group that you wanted to be part of?
Language and exclusion
Some languages have more power associated with them than other
languages. In many cases the official language of the country has
more power over languages spoken by minority groups. (In other
cases, languages used internationally such as English, Russian, or
French or German may have more power).
School systems reinforce this power when they do not give the same
value to minority languages. For children who speak these
languages it may have detrimental effects on their social and
personal development if hey are denied the right to speak them or if
they feel shame for using them.
Language and exclusion
4 groups
• Group 1 – the parents
• Group 2 – the teacher
• Group 3 – the director
• Group 4 – the other children
• Why did act the way you did?
• What could you have done differently?
• Do you have any questions for the other
groups?