Social theorist and linguistics use discoursers to investigate language as a social practice. Language has been found to be both socially sharping and socially shaped. Through its social identity, relations, and technique, language brings about complex discourses and conventions that influence social life (Hill, 2009). This complexity of discourse and functions of language, phenomena of the worlds are reduced. Language and its role in social life and social power are phenomena that lie on ethnicity. The complexity can be established when speakers either raise or lower the linguistic display that points out their identity aspects in relation to the context of their utterance and the goal they aimed to achieve. This kind of language use indicates that a speaker can use the language as a tool of power in relation to the identity the language gives him/her.
Linguistics and Anthropologists define the primary use of language to speak, joke, sing, write and read. Through these functions, human beings form socialization and give it meaning. Besides the core uses of language, it has also been used as a tool of power to justify oppression and subordination, both knowingly and unknowingly (Hill, 2009). By promoting negative stereotyping, the language had been used to shape political and economic views. Different languages based on ethnicity have been used to discriminate against groups of people. The language used by a specific group of people is considered superior and prestigious to the other language. Groups using the prestigious language consider themselves superior to the others who they presume it right to oppress.
The Monoglot Standard is explicit of how language has been used to establish power through normalization and othering. The Monoglot standard is implicated in the United States as part of White racism. This explains the emergence of standard languages and their preservation ideologies. These ideologies have also made the languages objects of laws and political influence. The doctrines implied that there is more than one language and only one is correct (Grasso, 2021). This belief contrasted the linguistic perspective that all languages are equal and rule-governed. Monoglot Standard also ranks language in order of its prestige and correctness. It makes other people more powerful and superior in because they speak a prestigious language, unlike the others. The oppressed who could not learn to speak the prestigious language were considered moral failures who lack proper ambition.
Language has also been used as ethnic identities. Individuals define themselves with respect to ethnicity, and it is expressed in their languages. In terms of their phonology, an African-American will prefer using phonological characteristics of his or her African American vernacular English language such as “aj” for “a” in pronouncing the word climbing (Grasso, 2021). European-Americans will also associate themselves with their languages by use of a specific dialect. If he or she is situated in New York, she/he will probably adapt the New York City dialect.
In the current society, language is being used in othering people into lesser or diminutive categories. In today’s social life, language is used to mark people based on gender, race, and sexual orientation. Society has set a type of language that men and women should use. The men language has been associated with power and authority, while the female language is a sign of softness and weakness. Also, language is being used as a show of power and knowledge. The learned and highly knowledgeable in society adapt a language with a different set of vocabulary used as an identity of their education levels. On the contrary unlearned people have been associated with simple language with the basic vocabulary.
References
Grasso, J. F. (2021). Language, Race and Ethnicity. Class lecture pdf.
Hill, J. H. (2009). The everyday language of white racism. John Wiley & Sons.