Think about the different styles you use when speaking to your siblings and parents, your friends, your significant other, your professors, your grandparents. What are some of the specific differences among these styles? What do these differences indicate about the power relationships between you and others?
If there is a key characteristic that distinguishes our species,
homo
sapiens
from others, it is human LANGUAGE and I hope you will find in Great Human Odyssey important references to this very subject. I also hope you will find theimportanceof the symbolic aspect of language that indeed contributed to ourhominizationbyfacilitating cooperationand learning, among many other aspects.
Here I am with the author of the article, Linda Light, it is a good idea to review the six-points definition of culture.
Historically, there have been wars fought over language or rather, over the right of a people or ethnic group to speak and communicate with their language, also to educate their children using their language; look at the problems Turkey has had with the Kurds (orviceversa), or thehorrible war between Pakistan andBanglades,or the many conflicts the Spanish state have faced byimposingCastelian(Spanish) to all regions/ethnicgroups that insist in holding into their languages like Catalan,Euskadi,Gallego. In India, the state was challenge by the people from TamilNaduin the south, also over the imposition of Hindi as a national language. I hope you realize that language allows a people/ethnic group to be, to have an IDENTITY.
I’d like also to call your attention to the fact that in large scale societies like the modern states, like those that I mentioned above, and also in the United States, the way people speak has been codified by those in power –political, economic and social. Therefore, the inequality based on these is also reflected in how the differences in “dialects”, accents, expressions used by different social groups could be translated into discrimination in education, health, political rights, etc. (please, think about COVID pandemic and what happens if people don’t have equal access to information about resources = no translations/no interpreters, just to give you an example.
NOTE: The fact that humans have achieved that quality of communication systems -human language-doesn't place them above other species, doesn't grant them the power to enact violence against other species.
I would like you to watch a documentary, "Do You Speak American?" Watch the first of the series (welcome to watch more). This is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcx7khaN180&t=48s
Can you see common themes with the matter in the chapter of language? If so, what are they? Please answer these questions after having answer the Discussion Questions at the end of the chapter.