Reading question 150 wrds

Language and identity - individual, social, national

At once, with contemptuous perversity, Mr Vladimir changed the language, and began to speak idiomatic English without the slightest trace of a foreign accent.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

One-dimensional social identities are not what they used to be ... We all make choices about how seriously we take such identities, and many of us make choices about the identities themselves.

Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn 't What It Used to Be

A basic tenet of sociolinguistics is that language displays its -ers' identity. The stories of Eliza Doolittle and the Osaka samurai sed in chapters I and 2, respectively, contain the same message:

_ language gives you away. This theme corresponds to strong : ar beliefs about identity and language which on occasion take __ ther peculiar forms. For example, when in March 2003, desperate _ ·ert the imminent Amei-ican attack on Iraq, Saddam Hussein

....:::ed CBS reporter Dan Rather an exclusive interview, the English ..=.::lation of his remarks was aired in an Arabic-accented voice. The ~ belonged to Steve Winfield, a professional speaker known for his - in imitating accents. Upon inquiry, CBS declared the accent was

- 03n ' to fit the nature ofthe broadcast'. This looks like an instance of

-~r bizarre logic, since it was unmistakably clear that Mr Saddam's -=:nents were translated and hence not literally his words let alone

oice. However, CBS's decision testifies to the belief that identity is _ -sed not just by what is said, but by how it is said; that the .=:rage must match the message. - twithstanding such unusual choice of accent as in the CBS case, _ is, of course, a great deal of inductive evidence for the relationship - intended to express. If you hear people speak Italian, Japanese,

........ rican American English, you assume they are Italian, Japanese, - African American; and if you hear English spoken with an Arabic

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accent, you assume the speaker to be an Arab: A more subtle message, perhaps, conveyed by the accented voice is this, 'once an Arab, always an Arab'. You are what you are. This is the whole point of categories and the logic of identity: p = p. Every individual is identical with itself. In linguistics, an important theoretical concept is grounded in this notion of self-identity. It is called 'native speaker'. 1

The native speaker is invoked as the arbiter of grammaticality who is needed as a conceptual reference point of grammatical description, although it is generally admitted that it has no real-world referent. In theoretical linguistics this concept is needed to justify the delimitation of the realm of inquiry and in order to be able to identify a language. A language in this sense is what native speakers speak. For the purposes of description and analysis non-native varieties can be ignored. Like the resultant grammar, the native speaker is a theoretical construct, an idealization, as Noam Chomsky has always emphasized. Yet, this concept has a strong popular appeal beyond the realm of theoretical linguistics where it is interpreted not as a construct but as a primitive of what we know about language. Everyone is a native speaker and has a native language, also known as 'mother tongue'; From this point of view, one's mother tongue is often conceptualized in Whorfian terms as an inescapable part of individual identity. A correlate of the belief in the nativity oflanguage is the widely held conviction that we can have only one mother tongue, just as we have only one (biological) mother. People who make us doubt this apparent truism are suspicious, like the above-quoted secret agent described by Joseph Conrad, who, with his non-native but perfect English prose, is a witness of sorts to the case under discussion here. Such suspicion is grounded in an ideological conception of language and identity which conflates individual and collective identity, linking both to loyalty. Only secret agents and other shadowy characters have a divided loyalty.

It should be obvious that the native speaker, the scientific paradigm that employs him and the grammatical descriptions that grow out of his testimony are a product of politics predicated on 'we-they' distinctions and the need for drawing community boundaries. Equally clear is that a unitary notion of native speaker and the linguistic theory based on it will have problems with stylistic variation, code-switching, code mixing, digloss(a, bilingualism, semilingualism, language attrition, language shift, nativized varieties of colonial languages, fluid mother-tongue affiliations and other language-contact phenomena that form the mainstay of socio- linguistic interest. They all have in common that they call for a notion of identity more sophisticated than 'p = p, and for ever so', attesting as they do to the great difficulty of distinguishing in a non-arbitrary fashion native from native-like, non-native and other" gradations of competence in a language and the consequent difficulty of defining

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_ speech community in objective terms. If, indeed, language expresses = entity, individual and collective, then, given the elusiveness of a lan- ~age and its native speaker, identity, too, must be a rather murky notion.

Destiny or choice? _!t'W&tt=h~~_!lIi

At the same time, it cannot be denied that language is experi- =nced as a marker of identity, that it is loved and celebrated as a symbol f us-ness, as well as detested and cursed, where the speech forms that are

:herished or despised stand in for the people using them. As we speak, we :-eveal who we are, where we grew up, our gender, our station in life, our ge, and the group we want to belong to. And we would not be able to do

50 if others didn't act in like manner. The question is how it is done, more ~ recisely, whether it is done inevitably or deliberately, by destiny or :hoice. Eliza Doolittle and the Osaka samurai attest the symbolic as Jistinct from the instrumental function of a language, but their stories ~ve another point in common that is relevant here, and that is that there ;- nothing native about the sociosymbolic function of identity manifest-

tion. Attracted by the prospects of a better life, Eliza opted for a new .inguistic identity that made her acceptable to a group which would drnit no Cockney speaker, Cockney being a symbol of the kind of

_owly life they distinguished themselves from. And Yukichi Fukuzawa .:ould slip into alternating roles, at one moment that of a samurai and the

ext that of a merchant, just by altering his speech. Linguistic identity, ::hese examples suggest, is not an inescapable fate imposed upon us but, :0 some extent at least, a social construct, a matter of choice .

Consider the experience of Alan Davies, a man from South Wales :aised in an English-speaking home, who as an adult decided to brush

p his school-learnt Welsh as 'a test of his Welshness'. Having acquired a good command of Welsh, the question arose of what it meant for his fu ture life.

Proof of Welsh ness? Perhaps. More important for our present purposes is the appeal to the common human experience of feeling and asserting identity through language. We all want to belong, we all want to be native speakers, we all choose groups which we aspire to even though we may change our minds and leave , as I left, quite promptly, my adult Welsh- speaking group because I found its nationalism and exclusiveness oppres- sive and proselytising. As a proselyte, I was expected to choose my identity. I had always vaguely assumed that, like masks, identities could be added on ... But among those who were gryf yn yr achos (strong in the cause) [dual identity was not acceptable). You had to be either Welsh or English, either Welsh or British. Not both. Such a choice I found meaningless ... If to be Welsh meant making such a choice, then, I decided, that was a Welsh identity I did not wish to have . (Davies 1991: viiif.)

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Several lessons can be drawn from Davies' reflections for sociolinguistic identity studies, four of which I want to discuss in what follows.

1. Identity change is possible. Although Davies was not a native speaker of Welsh, acquiring a certain degree of competence made him eligible, in the eyes of other Welsh speakers, to affiliate himself with the language and use it as proof of his Welshness. Davies decided that he didn't want the kind of Welsh identity that his teachers pro- moted, but he had the option. Critical age and the general difficulties of learning a new language notwithstanding, millions of immigrants adopt the language of their target country every year, as 'another mask to add on' without discarding the one they were used to wearing, or exclusively as the only language they offer their children. Immigration is an obvious occasion for such a choice to be made, although it does not explain how it is made, that is, whether the new language is acquired principally as a practical instrument or also imbued with symbolic meaning for identity expression. But the circumstances of immigration do not provide the only context for identity change .

Haaland (1969) describes a case of boundary transcendence between the Fur and the Baggara in western Sudan . The former are sedentary cultivators speaking Fur, a Nilo-Saharan language, while the Arabic- speaking Baggara are pastoral nomads. Every year about 1 per cent of the Fur take up nomadic life, joining a group of Baggara, a first step in the process of identity change. Their children will grow up speaking Arabic and will be considered, both by the Baggara and the Fur, as Baggara. The main reason that some Fur choose to become Baggara, according to Haaland, is economic. Although the cattle-herding Baggara and the millet-growing Fur complement each other economic- ally and in lifestyle, many Fur also grow cattle which is more profitable if herds are allowed to migrate to distant pastures than if their owners remain sedentary.

More generally speaking, economic incentives provide a principal rationale for crossing group boundaries and identity change? Ethnolinguistic identity change is indicative of the kind of association involved. Linguistically defined groups can be joined by outsiders, in principle, although not all groups are equally open or use language as the key entrance ticket. Max Weber (1968: 40f.) remarked that 'ethnic membership ... differs from the kinship group precisely by being a presumed identity' . This holds true also of language group membership . It does not mean that a presumed identity is no identity at all, but that it is flexible and dynamic rather than unalterably given.

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2. Identity change requires effort and is not equally easy in all cases. Asserting Welsh identity by means of learning Welsh as an adult is more difficult than opting out of Welshness in an environment where English is the unmarked choice in most communications. Making a marked choice is always more difficult than making an unmarked hoice. This is a structural disadvantage for minority speech commu-

nities, because unless they live in secluded settlements, the minority language will be the marked choice more frequently than the majority language. Displaying one's identity is not equa:lly relevant in all situ- ations, but in a majority/minority context with widespread bilingual- ism in the minority group, use of the minority language is in many -peech situations taken as a manifestation of identity, no matter whether or not such manifestation is intended. For this reason alone and because of the utility differential between majority language and minority language, identity change from minority to majority is always ~asier than vice versa, provided language is the key identity marker, :-ather than race, social class or religion.

3. The emphasis placed on language as an identity marker is variable. The same language may play differing roles as the vehicle of group identity. For example, Dutch is habitually instrumentalized as an ~dentity marker in Belgium where it competes with French, but much _es s so in the Netherlands where it is unchallenged. Speaking Dutch in Holland is the default choice. Similarly, in diaspora the symbolic harge of languages generally increases because the question of joining

a new group which never arose in the homeland cannot be sidestepped . In a language's homeland few people ever consider the question whether they should retain it, although very small minorities may be faced with the issue of discontinuing their linguistic tradition. 3

There is another sense in which the language-identity link is variable. The identity associated with standard varieties of international lan- guages such as English, French, Spanish and German is more diffuse -han that of smaller, culturally more homogeneous speech commu- nities. Weak identity expression seems to be an inadvertent by-product of language standardization, but much . depends on the linguistic cul- rure. French has been a key symbol of French cultural identity for zenturies, the high degree of standardization of the language being a rucial feature of its esteem. It is a common standard that makes

F rench a valuable language, providing the peoples of many countries with a common anchor ofid~ntity. The institutional framework of this ·dentity is the International Organization of 'Francophonie', which defines itself as an alliance grounded in French-based culture. As D ennis Ager (1996: 57) notes, 'for some, the defence of Francophonie . . the same thing as the defence of French culture' . Yet, a certain ension results from the universal appeal and internationalism of

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Francophonie, on the one hand, and the inalienable conceptual ties between the French language and French culture, on the other. For, in West Africa, in Canada and in the Antilles, French serves the expres- sion of cultures that have notable differences from the French. One way of resolving the issue is to consider France as the home of metropolitan cultural identity which is a critical component of various subidentities expressed by local varieties of French, as in Quebec, and French creoles, as in the Caribbean, whose speakers recognize the metropoli- tan standard.

Other ' big' standard languages have been enlisted for identity mani- festation similarly, internal variability being exploited to that end. Irish English, also 'Hiberno-English', is a good example. In the event, the function of identity has been transferred from one language to another. As a result of steady decline since the early nineteenth century, the Irish language has lost its communicative functions, almost entirely being reduced to nothing but a token of identity expression for the vast majority of Irish families . Since this function alone cannot sustain a language, language shift to English as 'a means of gaining access to improve economic conditions both within Ireland and overseas' (Harris 1991 : 44) is irreversible. However, notwithstanding the rem- nants of Irish, English has taken over all functions of Irish in Ireland, including that of identity display having evolved into a distinct cluster of varieties (6 Muirithe 1977).

A question of great significance for sociolinguistic identity research is what happens when a speaker oflrish English moves to London, and whether it makes a difference if that person is a man or a woman, an adult or a child, a lawyer or a longshoreman. Only some generalizations are possible. Children are more likely and quicker than adults to drop the Irish features of their speech and blend in with their new environ- ment, and the same can be said of professionals and labourers, respect- ively. But reliable predictions are difficult because individual linguistic identity is a synthesis of given and adopted elements, and, as with deportment and dress , individuals have preferences as to which identity they want to display and whether to display it in a conspicuous or subtle way.

4 . The language- identity link is historically contingent. Welsh was not always a minority language in the British Isles orin Wales; speaking or not speaking Welsh was not always a political issue. But over time, in the wake of industrialization and much intermarriage (Williams 1987), English made ever more inroads into Wales and Welsh became a language associated with provincialism and backwardness. 4 By the promotion of English, condemned by some as a policy of language eradication and welcomed by others as a way of providing access to the majority culture, Welsh came under pressure, being perceived as a

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stigma by the English-speaking majority and many of its own speakers. It is only against this background that the radical attitude adopted by the Welsh activists, among whom Alan Davies learnt Welsh, can be understood. A double identity is easy to espouse from the secure position of a dominant language like English, but intolerable from the point of view of the underdog that has been driven out of its proper territory. Welsh activists were intent on, and, as they saw it, entitled to , reclaiming this territory and, therefore, insisted on equating identity claims with undivided loyalty. That was in the 1970s . In the meantime, Welsh has regained institutional support and with it status and func- tion in Wales which helped Welsh speakers to some extent to come out of the defensive corner fenced off by the activists. Colin Williams (1999: _80) , coauthor of The Community Research Project on R egenerating Welsh as a Community Language (1997), explains: 'Support for Welsh can no longer be interpreted as essentially a symbol of resistance to

nglicization, for the language is deeply imbued in the process of state socialization.' Welsh is extraordinary because its decline, it seems, could be halted, but otherwise similar stories of languages that were charged in their history, at times more and at other times less, with the symbolic manifestation of identity can be found on all ontinents.

At a certain point in history, Welsh was a stigmatized language, discriminated against by a dominant society and state and despised by many of its own speakers . Such a fate is not uncommon among minority languages. While discrimination and self-hate foster language shift, it has been argued that they also strengthen support for a lan- guage. The persistence in the United States of African American Vernacular English5 in spite of longstanding negative attitudes toward it provides a pertinent example. Why is it that, while 'good' language is widely perceived as a means of social advancement, low-prestige var- ieties like African American English are not discarded by their speakers and replaced by more highly regarded ones? The most persuasive answer is their role as symbols of identity, local, social, ethnic and national. Black English is a stigmatized variety because it is spoken mainly by those at the bottom of the social hierarchy in the United States. But although its grammatical and pronunciation features are used most by those with least education and smallest earning power, it is also endorsed and enjoyed by blacks who are well educated and hold good jobs. Rather than being a social indicator, it indexes African American ethnicity. 'Black adults of all ages talk the vernacular, and it functions to express their black identity, too ' (Rickford and Rickford 2000: 224). Identity assertion by choice of variety, especially by a disadvantaged group, is often an act of defiance which can be under- stood only against the background of its sociohistorical context.