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Language's Role In Society and the Individual - College Papers

Language's Role In Society and the Individual

Language as Tradition and Experience in Discourses by Chang-Rae Lee, Dennis Baron, and Amy Tan

In society, one of the most important social systems that provide interaction and communication among people is language. As a set of socially accepted codes in the society, language is mainly culture-bound, influenced, shaped, and developed by its users. Language, in effect, functions and exists not only a system of codes used for communication, but it is also a tradition, where people share a common stream of thought-that is, similarity in thinking, as determined by experience.
Indeed, language acts not only as a tradition, but also as an experience for individuals and the society. As ...

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In the field of social psychology, it is posited that language determines thought, and this hypothesis, called the theory of linguistic relativity, is proposed by Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir. The theory shows how language determines people's perceptions of their social realities, as experienced and related to within their society. Chang-Rae Lee, Dennis Baron, and Amy Tan confront this issue in discourses on language as tradition and experience. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the authors' works and arguments about language and its function and meaning for the individual and society.
Chang-Rae Lee's discourse, Mute in an English-Only World, is a narrative of the author's viewpoint on the importance of language in the society, as experienced by Lee's mother. Lee, through the article, expresses the argument that language influences an individual's degree of assimilation in the society, especially a new society where values and culture are different from the ...

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Language's Role In Society and the Individual. (2016, April 3). Retrieved November 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Languages-Role-In-Society-and-Individual/105529

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 4/3/2016 03:38:51 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1208
Pages: 5

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