Short note on language as an act of identity
Answers
Man is a social being. He or she is linked to other people through an emotional connection, sometimes seen as a form of friendship, affection or love. A group consists of at least two people. The first group to which a person belongs from birth is the baby and mother group. Then a person belongs to more and more groups, at first smaller and then larger.
F. de Saussure defined language structurally as a system of signs used for communication. The signs are arbitrary (made up) and language is a social phenomenon. Language has two basic functions: communication and identity. We will deal with the communicative and linguistic aspects in other chapters. Here we will consider the identity function.
The main requirement of a group is to find a way to distinguish members from non-members. Group members learn a language within the group and only those who belong to the group can use it to a high degree of competence. Therefore language is the principal factor through which people can distinguish whether a stranger belongs to their group or not, and in most cases also to which other group that person belongs.
Answer:
Language is very important factor for creating a identity of your own. If you have command over one language you are considered to be knowledgeable but if you have command over more than one language then you are adaptable to different areas of the country. Since India is a diverse country, one has to know every language because knowing one single language will not help much but if you know more languages then you can get job anywhere. It will also help us to interact others and it will also make others to understand our thoughts.