Episode Transcript
Welcome to The Exceptional Humans Podcast,
where we discuss questionsrelated to language, identity,
education, and behavior.
I'm your host, Penelope and Ihave a background in education,
linguistics, and behavioralscience.
Today, I thought we would talkabout culture, identity and
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language through the lens ofsociolinguistics.
Sociolinguistics is a term usedto describe the interaction
between language, society andpersonal identity and assists
humans in understanding andnavigating through the world
around them.
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There are many factors thatinfluence our identity.
These can include things likeculture, geographic, familial,
personal, and power.
Today, I thought we woulddiscuss two of these factors
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that influence our identity.
I'm going to break these downinto various categories.
It should be noted that thislist is not a complete list of
categories that would fall undercultural and geographical
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factors influencing identity.
However, I think that they aresome of the larger and more
approachable concepts for us toconsider when we explore how
these particular categories haveimpacted our personal identity.
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So the first one is our ethnicbackground.
This is closely linked to oursecond factor, which is cultural
heritage.
Often people see these two termsas interchangeable, and these
two factors are closely linked.
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Ethnicity and cultural heritagehave a huge impact in our
identity.
Being a first generationAustralian on both sides of my
family with parents fromdifferent countries of origin is
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quite a significant part of mypersonal identity.
The next factor that influencesour identity is language.
My first language is English.
However, I grew up in ahousehold speaking British
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English at home and AustralianEnglish outside of the house,
particularly at school.
This has had quite a big impacton my vocabulary and how I
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express myself in differentsocial situations.
It has given me quite a uniqueaccent and means that I can code
switch or switch between BritishEnglish and Australian English
unconsciously depending on thecultural identity of the people
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I am with.
This has been strengthened bythe fact that I spent quite a
number of years working inBritish international schools
around the world.
The next factor that influencesidentity is religion.
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Whether or not we identifyourselves as practicing a
religion, often the religiousaffiliations in our extended
family impact the way that weexpress ourselves and certain
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aspects of our identity.
National identity and locationare also significant factors in
how we communicate.
As I previously stated, Iidentify as a first generation
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Australian.
This means that there is acertain amount of distance
created between myself andmainstream Australian
identities, and this affects theway that I can communicate with
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others.
Ironically, I was born in one ofAustralia's capital cities.
However, I grew up in a ruralarea of Australia and attended
an incredibly small ruralAustralian primary school.
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This experience made me veryaware of how different I was
from the majority of students inmy peer group.
I did not look the same as them,I did not sound the same as
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them, I didn't even eat the samefoods as them.
And those experiences helpedstrengthen my identity as a
first generation Australian andhelped reinforce the distance I
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feel between myself andmainstream Australian culture.
And that leads into the last ofthe factors I wanted to discuss
today.
The last of the factors that Iwanted to discuss is language
communities.
I mentioned code switchingbefore.
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Code switching is something wedo where we change things like
our vocabulary, our sentencestructure, even sometimes the
language we are speakingdepending on who we are
communicating with and ourdesire to be part of that
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communication group.
As I me mentioned before, Ispent a significant part of my
adult life working ininternational schools.
The majority of that time wasspent in the Middle East.
However, I also spent timeteaching in Asia.
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As part of that experience, Ihave acquired some understanding
and vocabulary of the languagesspoken in the countries in which
I lived.
I do speak some Arabic, I canalso read Arabic.
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I also have a intenseappreciation for anybody who can
speak a tonal language afterattempting to learn Vietnamese
and realizing that I could notaccurately distinguish between
the various tones used inVietnamese.
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All of these factors contributeto our willingness to engage
with various languagecommunities, as well as
impacting how we engage.
I would be curious to know ifany of the factors discussed
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have had a significant impact onyour personal identity and how
you believe they have ident, andhow you believe those factors
have influenced your identity.
Furthermore, all of thesefactors influence how we
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communicate with others on adaily basis.
They influence not only thewords that we use and the way we
may structure a sentence, theyalso influence a willingness to
enter into various languagecommunities as well as
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influencing the biases we mighthave around language.
The Exceptional Humans Podcastis written and recorded on Kabi
Cubby and Gender Barra lands.
We would like to pay ourrespects to their elders past,
present, and emerging, and payour respects to all Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islanderpeoples listening today.
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