Language, People, Places
A person can only see her surrounding areas as mere physical existence when she reaches a new region. As her experience is accumulated, emotion dedicated, and memories accrued, she attaches meaning to this space. During this process, the natural space gradually turns to a meaningful place supplemented by the visitor’s interpretations. This is the beginning and base from which she is able build relationship with a place. Then follows the question how are place and the self related. I would argue that a person and a place are tied together when the person clearly knows about its good as well as its deficiency, but she still choose to praise and defend it at any time with full passion. From a more general view of mine as an international student studying in the States, I assume that language is a crucial way of building personal and emotional connections between places and individuals. Essentially, language serves as a necessary tool for one to explore and understand a place. In addition, language has influential and indefinite effects on building a person’s social network. Moreover, language itself functions as a way by which many regional cultures are preserved. And these cultures are one of the many components of one’s identity. Some people may argue that language is a simple communication tool for the exchange of information, which has no authentic effect on associating individuals and places. Nonetheless, I believe that language is a fundamental way in deciding and building up the relationship between people and places.
Basically, language decides whether to what extent one can understand a place. Apparently, language can ensure basic communications; however, only understanding the grammatical rules of a language is not sufficient to make one know well about the place itself. Tuan argues that people utilize five cognitive senses to perceive the world. As they actively think about the surrounding environment, people can gain solid experiences in this place. (Yi-Fu Tuan 12). Thus, it is necessary to have a sense of the emotions and feelings concealed by words to interact with a place. My own experience can illustrate this point. I was born and raised in Nanjing, a city in southern China, while my mother’s hometown is Yantai in the north. Most of our relatives live in Yantai as well. Visiting them in Yantai every year, I am familiar with all of them and always keep an intimate and solid interaction with them. However, whenever asked by people where my hometown is, Yantai would never come to my mind. Under this situation, I then strived to find out what is excluding me from admitting this city that I regularly lived and that is in fact my second hometown as part of my identification. Although nearly all the evidence supports that my life is closely involved with Yantai, I discovered that it is language that hinders my understanding of Yantai To be more detailed, with discrete years of living experience in Yantai, I can generally understand what people means when they are talking in Yantai dialect but am not able to speak it by myself; neither can I precisely catch the implicit meanings people intend to convey with Yantai dialect. Thus, people automatically convert into standard Chinese when talking to me, because I am incapable of comprehending the precise meaning of certain words from Yantai dialect. In this situation, I cannot express my emotions with those specific words and tones used by them. As the only conversation that does not use dialect, our speech sounds so official that it suggests that I am exotic. As a result, I have to watch their life in Yantai all the time, incapable of figuring out a sense of belonging to the community. From this case, although it is certain that both of my relatives and I acknowledge me as a member of the family, the subtle switch in language separates me and the other local people onto two sides, excluding me as an outsider of Yantai and incessantly reminds me that I am an authentic member who belongs to this community.
(A SET OF VOCABULARIES FROM NANJING DIALECT)
Aside from language’s most basic effect in connecting people and places above, language is also one of the main factors that decides the scale and status of people’s social network that shapes one’s identity. Boroditsky proves that speaking differing languages has profound influence on people’s ways of thinking. In other words, speakers of specific languages have some attributes derived from their language skills, that other people do not own. For example, it is easier for Kuuk Thaayorre speakers to stay oriented because they put much emphasis on the spatial definition when talking (Boroditsky 140). It is reasonable to deduct that they pay more attention to the space and orientation to cater to the rules of speech. Hence this type of focus on language application enables them to think more about space than speakers of other languages. With this theory, speech can reveal one’s thoughts and mind. It then can function to attract people who are empathetic with her and have similarities with her. Thus, this group of people is very likely to have more similar ways of thinking in some aspects. Furthermore, with the fact that languages that are derived from close places resemble each other to some extent, by language people with common life experience gather. Consequently the social network in return consolidates and refines one’s assumed perception of her identity, the understanding and belief of who she is. The American writer Amy Tan demonstrates the conflict caused by the unfamiliarity with a language in her book, The Mother Tongue, by writing about her mother’s life experience in the U.S. Although having been living in the U.S for a long period of time, Tan’s mother still failed to establish a bond to this place. To be sure, as she dedicated emotions to it, the U.S was no longer a pure space but a place to her. She could even read highly complicated books with no difficulty but spoke in broken English that make people get confused about her meanings. And to some people, her broken English is a sign of low education level. Due to this incapability of language, she suffered from discrimination and felt confortable when socializing with only Chinese speakers for most of the time. As a result, she consistently kept customs and traditions from China, refusing to merge into the culture in the U.S. In other words, every time when she communicated with the outside world, she repeated confirming to herself that she did not genuinely belong to the U.S. society. One can conclude that it is language that brought her into the specific social circle and adjusts how she perceived and defined her relationship with the world.
From a broader perspective, language is a carrier of the culture that is the independent symbols of a place and therefore the main component of the people from that place. Various forms can embody the content of cultures, for example, literary works, myths, songs, poems and so on. They are recorded in both oral and written texts. Because a group of their content depends on the regional culture and these works are passed from generation to generation, they effectively influence the mind and sense of people of that specific region. Moreover, collecting these works, people label them with cultural categories. As a result, they become the symbol of the specific place and blend into the local’s identity. In the book Space and Place, Yifu-Tuan supports the argument that literary works can maintain and enhance the particular culture of a space by referring to 221 Baker Street, a spot in London famous for its exposures in detective novels. Tuan writes, “221B Baker Street is more vividly present to some Londoners…” and “London has an unmistakable personality thanks in part to the influence of its rich literature…” (Tuan 690) From this case, one can see that literature enhances the actual spot in a place. Then London itself as a natural place is transformed by literary imagination and the detective novel culture is enhanced. While Londoners are able to integrate both their personal and real experience with the fictional literature to examine the place, this is mysterious feature becomes a part of London’s culture, revolving in Londoner’s life.
The linguistic approach is always applied in the construction of a place from a space. And also language is so fundamental and indispensable in our human life. Therefore, it is not solely a tool for us to communicate or to satisfy the most basic living and physiological needs. It is a carrier of culture values and emotions, and is one of the most frequently used ways for one to build connection to a place. It assists people to understand and experience a place, understanding it as insider residents. Afterwards, it starts orienting the individuals to participate in social groups that can strengthen the bonds between places and the individuals themselves. Extending to a more general aspect, language also records cultures of various places, transmitting them to generations of residents and help the people cultivate emotional memories of the places.
(The classic Nanjing ballad)
(The Historical Movie in Nanjing Dialect)
Annotated Bibliography
Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan." Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.
Amy Tan writes about the experience of her mother who received unequal treatment due to her incapability of oral language skills. This condition hindered her from engaging in the American community.
Tuan, Yifu. Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative Descriptive Approach. Madison: Department of Geography, U of Wisconsin, Madison, n.d. Print.
Tuan points out that language plays an important role in transforming space to place. This process can be very subjective and concerns moral issues. I will use this source to support my idea that people’s linguistic-construction process of their hometowns differ from the process of other places and the reason of it.
Tuan, Yi-fu. "Space and Place." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2014.
This article argues that space and place are two different definitions. Space is only a physical existence while place is attached with emotion and specific meanings. Space can turn to place. This idea helps me build the argument that the variances of dialects can in fact influence people’s perception of space and place.
Course Document from Blackboard: Where Are You From? Notions of Identity & Place, “Rhode Island” Jhumpa Lahiri
Lahiri talks about her own immigration experience from London to Rhode Island. Her statements and description illuminate the idea that place and space different. My focus will be on the comparison between her own emotion and condition as an immigrant and those of her parents.
Course Document from Blackboard: How Our Languages Shape the Way We Think, Boroditsky
Boroditsky talks about the idea that different language speakers have diverse ways of thinking and perceiving the world. Speaking another language also means thinking in a different way. I will integrate this point to prove that how language ties one’s identity to her hometown.