Language and Ethnic identity

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Language and Ethnic Identity

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Lead – in
•Think of yourself as an individual.
•Create a mind map of yourself, describing
what makes you, you!

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Mingle around activity
• What is identity?
• If someone asked you to describe your identity, where do you think you'd
start?
• Would you mention where you were born and where you live?
• Would you mention who your parents are and the languages that you
speak? If so, these are factors that contribute to your ethnic identity.
• Does being able to speak in English have anything to do with your sense of
identity?
• What do you feel about speaking in English and in Uzbek or the other
languages?
• What is the role of language in the development of a person’s identity?

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Ethnicity definitions
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According to Max Weber, “ethnic groups are those human groups that entertain a subjective
belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or
because of memories of colonization or migration; this belief must be important for the
propagation of group formation; conversely, it does not matter whether or not an objective
blood relationship exists” (quoted in Hutchinson & Smith 1996, p. 35).
2. According to Horowitz (1985, p. 52), “[e]thnicity is based on a myth
of collective ancestry, which usually carries with it traits believed to
be innate. Some notion of ascription, however diluted, and affinity
deriving from it are inseparable from the concept of ethnicity.”
3. According to Fearon & Laitin (2000, p. 20), an ethnic group is “a
group larger than a family for which membership is reckoned
primarily by descent, is conceptually autonomous, and has a
conventionally recognized ‘natural history’ as a group.”

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4. In a subsequent refinement, Fearon (2003, p. 7) defines a
“prototypical” ethnic group as one that has several of the following
features: (a) Membership is reckoned primarily by descent; (b)
members are conscious of group membership; (c) members share
distinguishing cultural features; (d) these cultural features are valued by
a majority of members; (e) the group has or remembers a homeland;
and (f) the group has a shared history as a group that is “not wholly
manufactured but has some basis in fact.”
5. According to Smith, an ethnic group is “a named human population
with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or
more elements of a common culture, a link with a homeland and a
sense of solidarity” (Hutchinson & Smith 1996, p. 6).

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Ethnicity is an important social factor for many
people. Our ethnic background influences both
our cultural and language practices, meaning that
it can become a big part of our identity. Language
is therefore a way of expressing our ethnicity and
identity.

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Example
• When I meet a new person, the first question that is always asked is:
“What is your name?” to which I respond, “Lourdes.” That is my first
identity, my name.
The second question that typically follows in the society where I live is,
“Do you live here?”. Since I know where this conversation is going, I
limit my answer to the precise question asked, so I respond, “Yes, I live
in Miami”. I know that the question the person wants to ask is, “But
where are you really from?”. My second identifier is now revealed, “I
am Cuban.”. This second identity element tells you much more about
who I really am than knowing my name and where I live.

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What is identity?
• Identity, simply stated, is who you are; individuality;
the condition of being a certain person. In the social
sciences, identity is defined as the way that
individuals label themselves as members of a
particular group; in psychology, it refers to an
individuals’ self-esteem or self-image.
• We can speak about social identity, gender identity,
cultural identity, religious identity, national identity
and many other identities.

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What is Ethnic Identity?
• Ethnic identity is a measurement of the feeling
of belonging to a particular ethnic group. Ethnic
identity can be measured in different ways. One
method of measurement is simply asking a
respondent about his or her identity with the
majority group and the respondent's ethnic
group.

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What are ethnic identity examples?
• 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, ancestry, practices, and beliefs.

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• Our ethnic identity may be associated with
differences in language use as well, such as how
we end a conversation or what we consider to
be a compliment.
• The language or dialect associated with our
ethnic identity may be the focus of criticism by
others and leave us open to painful ridicule,
prejudice, and stereotypes.

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So, what is the role of language in the
development of identity
• Erin said that her ability to speak Korean helped her find a Korean identity
and that without her ability to speak the heritage language she would feel
American, not Korean:
“I couldn’t really say that I am Korean unless I knew how to speak it.
Speaking Korean helps me keep in touch with my roots. And being able to
speak Korean makes me feel more like a Korean person. Being able to speak
Korean shaped my identity, and Korean is just my identity. Yeah, I think
language deals with a lot of it because if I can’t speak Korean, I don’t know if
I would really feel Korean, because language is a big part, I think. Like, I have
to be able to communicate with other Koreans, and I have to be able to like,
to read Korean and know what they’re talking about, because if I didn’t, I’d
just feel like I was completely Americanized. “

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Language and Identity: Introduction
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpKkLIdtNw

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How does language affect our identity?
• Language exposes many facets of a person's
identity, it determines how we interact with
other people.
• Ethnic and social identity assumes an important
part in which language controls how we perceive
the world, no matter what the mother tongue is.

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• People may greet differently, request differently
or use their speech intonation differently and
these varieties are reflections of their identity.
Speakers define their positions with other
individuals by using a specific linguistic variety
that conveys more than what is said (Jacewicz,
Fox, & Wei, 2010).

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Example 1
• The link between language and identity is often so strong that a single
feature of language use suffices to identify someone's membership in
a given group.
Example:
On the battle-field after their victory over the people of Ephraïm, the
Gileads applied a language-identity test to sort out friend and foe: All
of the soldiers were asked to pronounce the word shibboleth; those
who pronounced the first consonant as [∫] were friends, those who
pronounced it [s] were enemies and therefore killed at once

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Example 2
• When I was in Montreal I found a small restaurant in the old French
quarter where the menu looked affordable and attractive. I was
greeted in French by the waiter and I responded in French, though my
accent clearly signalled that I was a native English speaker. At this
point, the waiter, who was undoubtedly bilingual, had a choice. He
chose to continue in French and, though I cannot be sure of his
reasons, I interpreted this choice as expressing his wish to be identifi
ed as a French Canadian. In any case, I was very happy that my French
had not been so awful that he felt he had to switch to English.

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Example 3
• Lee : Kia ora June. Where you been? Not seen you round for a while.
June : Kia ora . I’ve just come back from my Nanny’s tangi [ FUNERAL
]. Been up in Rotorua for a week.
• Lee : E kï [ IS THAT SO! ] a sad time for you, e hoa [ MY FRIEND ] and
for all your family, ne [ ISN’T IT ].
• June : Ae [ YES ]. We’ll all miss Nanny. She was a wonderful woman.

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Explanation
• In New Zealand many Maori people routinely use Maori greetings
such as kia ora , and a conversation between two Maori people may
include emphatic phrases, such as e kï , softening tags such as ne ,
and responses such as ae , even when neither speaks the Maori
language fluently. Bargaining with Chinese retailers in the shopping
centres, Chinese Singaporeans similarly often signal their ethnic
background with linguistic tags, such as the untranslatable but
expressive la , and phrases or words from their ethnic language.
Emphasising common ethnicity may mean they get a better bargain!

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• Italians in Boston use a particularly high percentage of vernacular pronunciations
of certain vowels, such as the vowel in words like short and horse . Similarly, both
first and second generation Italians in Sydney are distinguishable in different ways
by their pronunciation of Australian English vowels.
• In New Zealand, as elsewhere in the world, Scots people tend to 188 An
introduction to sociolinguistics retain features of their Scottish English. The
pronunciation of [r] in words like part and star is widely noted as a marker of
Scottish ethnicity.
• American Jewish people often signal their ethnicity with a distinctive accent of
English within any city in which they have settled. Studies of Jewish people in
Boston and New York have identified distinctive pronunciations of some vowels.
Jewish Americans also use ethnically marked linguistic tags such as oy vay , and
occasional Yiddish vocabulary items, many of which, such as schmaltz , bagel ,
glitch and shlemiel , have passed into general US English.

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Exercise 1
• Consider the following utterances. Can you identify any of the
linguistic clues to the speaker’s ethnicity?
• (a) Yo mama so bowlegged, she looks like the bite out of a donut.
• (b) I cannae mind the place where those bairns are from.
• (c) Dem want me fi go up dere go tell dem.
• (d) Kia ora Hemi. Time to broom the floor eh.
• (e) Already you’re discouraged! Goyim like bagels so why not this.
• (f) My brother really hungry la. Let’s go for makan.

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Answer
• (a) This is an example of a young African American male ‘playing the dozens’, a competitive style
of speech which consists of ritual insults usually referring to the opponent’s mother. The use of
mama is typical of African American dialect, and the pronunciation suggested by yo provides
another ethnic clue. A grammatical clue is the omission of the verb form is after the word mama ,
another feature frequently found in the English of Black Americans.
• (b) This is Scottish speech. There are lexical clues – bairns for standard children and mind for
remember , and a grammatical clue – the use of cannae for standard can’t or cannot.
• (c) This is an example of the Patois used by British Blacks with Jamaican origins. The crucial clue is
the use of fi where standard English uses to . The use of d [d] where standard English uses th [e] is
another clue, but this is also found in many other dialects of English.
• (d) Two lexical features suggest the speaker is Maori: the greeting kia ora and the name Hemi (the
English equivalent is Jim ). The use of the word broom as a verb and the fi nal tag eh are
additional features which have been noted particularly in the speech of Maori people.
• (e) This speaker is a Jewish American as indicated by the words goyim to refer to non-Jewish
people or Gentiles, and bagels , a Jewish doughnut-shaped bread roll. The syntactic pattern of the
exclamation is also heard more frequently in Jewish discourse.
• (f) The speaker is either from Singapore or Malaysia, and probably Chinese or Malay in ethnicity.
The omission of is provides a clue since this verb is variably present in Singapore and Malaysian
English, but this is a feature of many dialects of English. The speaker is identifi able as
Singaporean or Malaysian by the use of the particle la and the Malay word makan for ‘meal’.

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Task
Can you identify any of the linguistic clues to
Uzbek speaker’s ethnicity?
Provide specific examples.