Speech as a signal of social identity

         Language is introduced by Crystal (1971, 1992) as “the systematic, conventional use of sounds, signs or written symbols in a human society for communication and self expression”. Similarly, Emmitt and Pollock (1997) believe that language is a system of arbitrary signs which is accepted by a group and society of users. It is taken delivery of a specific purpose in relation to the communal world of clients. Chase (1969) declares that the purpose of language use is to communicate with others, to think, and to shape one‟s standpoint and outlook on life. Indeed, language figures human thoughts (ibid).

             Language is one of the most powerful emblems of social behavior. In the normal transfer of information through language, we use language to send vital social messages about who we are, where we come from, and who we associate with. It is often shocking to realize how extensively we may judge a person’s background, character, and intentions based simply upon the person's language, dialect, or, in some instances, even the choice of a single word.

 Probably the largest social group to which one belongs is that of one’s speech community. There is a common sentiment in the Anglophone world that the USA and the UK have more in common culturally than the UK does with other European countries, simply because of the fact that the vast majority of the inhabitants of these two countries share a language. The same sentiment of a shared culture because of a shared language is true of Spain and Hispanophone Latin America. Fasold talks of the ‘unifying and separatist functions’ of language, which he explains as ‘the feeling of members of a nationality that they are united and identified with others who speak the same language, and contrast with and are separated from those who do not’. This places a sociolinguistic description on this feeling of cultural identification with those who share our language, and contrast with those who do not, regardless of geographical and true cultural proximity.

           When we use language, we do so as individuals with social histories. Our histories are defined in part by our membership in a range of social groups into which we are born such as gender, social class, religion and race. For example, we are born as female or male and into a distinct income level that defines us as poor, middle class or well-to-do. Likewise, we may be born as Christians, Jews, Muslims or with some other religious affiliation, and thus take on individual identities ascribed to us by our particular religious association. Even the geographical region in which we are born provides us with a particular group membership and upon our birth we assume specific identities such as, for example, Italian, Chinese, Canadian, or South African, and so on. Within national boundaries, we are defined by membership in regional groups, and we take on identities such as, for example, northerners or southerners.

In addition to the assorted group memberships we acquire by virtue of our birth, we appropriate a second layer of group memberships developed through our involvement in the various activities of the social institutions that comprise our communities, such as school, church, family and the workplace. These institutions give shape to the kinds of groups to which we have access and to the role-relationships we can establish with others. When we approach activities associated with the family, for example, we take on roles as parents, children, siblings or cousins and through these roles fashion particular relationships with others such as mother and daughter, brother and sister, and husband and wife. Likewise, in our workplace, we assume roles as supervisors, managers, subordinates or colleagues. These roles afford us access to particular activities and to particular role-defined relationships.

           The use of language to manipulate personal identity through group identity one portrays is, in fact, a display of an occurrence known within linguistics as Social Identity Theory. This is described by Meyerhoff as the way in which individuals can strategically use language as a potent symbol of identity when testing or maintaining intergroup boundaries. This can take place as either divergence, when one highlights the differences between the identity group one belongs to and that of one’s interlocutor, or as convergence, when in order to help form or nurture a social bond with the interlocutor, and to show solidarity and amiability towards that person, one may use language to play down the differences between oneself and the other person. A speaker is able to choose from the various linguistic choices available to him, knowing that these choices will be read by the listener as identity markers. The choices made can either create and or reinforce the bond between the two (convergence), or can work to increase the social distance between them (divergence). It is important to emphasise at this stage that this process almost always happens on a fully unconscious level.

            Identity is necessarily created through interaction. Every interaction is underscored by language. Identity cannot be without language. So, language is identity. And, if language is identity, and identity is performance, then by the property of transitivity, language is performance.It can be seen that language and identity are so inextricably linked that it is often difficult to think of one without the other. Soo as this we can say that speech can be concidered as a sign of social identity,speech defines who we are and which group of society we belong to.

the communication of identity plays a role within speakers’ use of language, and how the use of language affects the communication of one’s identity within one specific linguistic and cultural group.