Language is power
Is language power? The language we speak is one of the major expressions of our culture. The most important language you will ever learn is the language of experience. We all experience different scenarios in our lives but, at the same time, we all experience something similar to each other. People use language as their primary instrument for keeping up status and power. Language power is a proportion of one’s capacity to convey successfully in a given language, explicitly one that isn’t local to the speaker (Sourgo 1). This is the intersection between power and language.
At the beginning of the Poet Ali’s Ted talk, “The Most Important language you will ever learn” I thought I only spoke two languages: english and spanish. During this Ted talk, Ali did an amazing job at pointing out that we already speak more languages than we realize. Whether it is seeing a loved one battle cancer, loneliness, depression, and growing up struggling with being overweight, we all have at least one language in common that has made us into the person we are today.
In Lyiscott’s “3 ways” Ted talk, I completely agreed with her about how the type of environment we are surrounded with has an impact on what language we speak. I have three languages, the language I speak with my family, the language I speak with my friends, and the language I utilize in public. In my writing I want to be as respectful as I can because I want to respect my reader. If I were to be writing a children’s book I would want to not use any profanity whereas if i were to be writing a teenage book, I can add a few cuss words.
Since I am bilingual, I sometimes mix both languages, I use English while speaking spanish and vice versa. Throughout my life, I have realized that speaking another language comes with plenty of perks. While working at a restaurant as a hostess a few years ago, I was walking a family to their table when they began to express themselves badly about my service in spanish using profanity thinking I would not understand them, as I sat them down at their table, their faces turned red with embarrassment as I told them to enjoy their food in spanish.
Having only spanish speaking parents has had a large impact on my life. Just like in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” my mother has broken english as well. This shows how testing it tends to be if an individual is raised by a parent who talks english in a different form, as Tan’s and my mom does, mostly in light of the fact that it can bring about individuals being judged ineffectively by others. My parents understand english very well, but they struggle to speak it. Although their english is completely different compared to others, I still tend to understand exactly what they are trying to say. This is because I grew up with that english and got accustomed to it. This has caused many humiliations throughout their lives and as a young child, I would sometimes feel embarrassed and ashamed with my parents english. I would even interrupt my mother and translate for her when speaking english to save her from embarrassment just like how Amy Tan did with her mother. Although my parents have been here in the United States for 22 years, they still have not been able to be fluent in english. My mother does know a little english but, she says she prefers to say she does not save her from embarrassment. My parents also prefer to not be fluent in english and speak only spanish in our home, so my siblings and I can be fluent in both languages.
Growing up it was hard for me to learn english at school while getting spoken to in only spanish at home. Since my parents only spoke spanish, all the way up until I began kindergarten, I only knew spanish. It was difficult for me since my first language was spanish. My mother tells me that in kindergarten, I would ask the teacher if I could call her a spanish name instead of an english one because I could not even pronounce her name. It was tough to even make friends since there was no form of communication.
Language has power and its effect relies upon how we use it. We are continually utilizing language to advance our thoughts and trust into solid reality. To settle on progressively clever decisions about how we communicate and how we interpret others, we have to become increasingly mindful of the effect and intensity of language.
Works Cited
Sourgo, Youssef, et al. “Power, Language and Social Relations: Doing Things with Words.” Morocco World News, 21 Feb. 2014, www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/07/99544/power-language-and-social-relations-doing-things-with-words/.
