The development of the self begins in the early stages of life and continues to adapt and alter as we grow. We begin to differentiate ourselves from others during our early childhood development. Once you realize that other people exist independently of you, your behaviour shifts from passive to active.
Self-identity is an integral part of who we are and how we connect with others throughout our lives. The sociologist Antony Giddens stresses its importance to everything we do and the people we meet each day. Our self-identity evolves throughout our life, impacted by our experiences and interactions with others around us.
We have various components that make up our sense of self. The idea of ‘self’ covers a variety of identities which make us individuals; your individual speech pattern is known as your idiolect. The style of speech shared by people in a particular region or social group is known as your sociolect. It is a form of code switching, locked into social structures. Influences of your gender, age, ethnicity and beliefs, family and friends, education, work and social patterns are all linked in with the language you use to live your life and maintain your self identity. (Language may be important to maintain group identity, such as where a minority language is threatened. E.g., Māori in New Zealand).
Our sense of self is greatly impacted by the language and tactics we use since discourse plays a significant role in our lives. People develop ways to manage talks as harmoniously as possible.
Conversational Maxims
When you talk, your goal is to make sense to your audience using the laws and conventions of the language. Underlying all of the reasons for speaking is the cooperative idea that individuals want to express relevant information clearly. Speakers normally mean what they say, and listeners accept this while attempting to decipher the meaning.
In 1975, the philosopher Paul Grice proposed the guiding principles that are commonly used in discourse. These are maxims and not rules, since they are broken in almost every conversation, but provide a general framework for managing conversation.
Grice’s Maxims (point of Value):
- Maxims of quantity
- Maxim of relation
- Maxims of quality
- Maxims of manner
Conversational Face
This is each speaker’s sense of his or her own linguistic image and worth. Initiated by Erving Goffman in 1967 and developed by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson in 1987 states; every conversation could potentially impose, and even threaten, the sense of a person’s image. The result is that speakers feel frightened, ignored, or mocked, rather than supported and included.
Strategies to manage face-threatening acts:
- Positive politeness: Friendly strategies to make the participant feel good about themselves before starting a potentially face threatening act.
- Negative politeness: strategies intended to avoid giving offence and which would potentially restrict the freedom of someone else in the conversation.
In both instances, speakers expect the listener to comply with their request.
An important feature in any conversation is the relative power and influence of the participants. Conversational success is more likely to occur where strategies which take account of relative status of each participant are employed.
Other people and social groups play an important role in communicating with us, defining our self-identity.
Language and thought
The information that our cognitive abilities process and store helps in the development and maintenance of our sense of self. Our brains incorporate these stored concepts and memories, and we use this selective knowledge to understand other people’s words, behaviours, and attitudes. Our interactions with other individuals help us develop connections with them while also laying the foundation for our own sense of self.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:
In 1929, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf viewed that the words and grammar of a language directly shape the thoughts of its speakers. They believed that language shapes the ways in which a person forms a view of the world. e.g., Inuit tribes have three words for snow but English only has one, therefore Inuit people think in a more subtle way about snow due to their language.
- Linguistic determinism: The way we think about a culture is determined by its language.
- Linguistic reflectionism: Language which is used reflects the thoughts of its speakers, so language influences people’s views of their world but does not determine it.
- Linguistic relativity: The structure of a language does affect the speaker’s world but in a weaker influence than linguistic determinism.
For instance, Whorf concluded that the Hopi people did not think about time in the same way as English speakers because he thought the Hopi language lacked some tenses. In order to investigate his theory, Whorf immersed himself in Hopi culture and language, making in-depth observations and interviews to see how language affects how they perceive time. Despite their language structure, Whorf discovered via his studies that the Hopi do actually have a sophisticated sense of time.
Another principle – The Boas-Jakobson principle, developed in late 1950’s states that every thought can be expressed in every language by languages differ in the types of information they require speakers to mention when they use language.
The sinister point of view that totalitarian systems might use language to restrict thought was demonstrated by the author George Orwell in his novel. The fictional society described in the novel is very tightly controlled and is reinforced by the official language ‘newspeak’. The lexis of the language is limited and prevents people from rebelling as the language has no lexis for ‘bad’.
Through this we can also say that Language influences peoples’ thoughts which are reflected in behavior. Language changes in; gender, comedy, ethnicity, workplace changes, age, disability, religious beliefs have reinforced greater social equality for various groups.
Political correctness (PC) has good intentions of treating everyone equally. However, some PC vocabulary has been criticised for being overly sensitive. There are fears that regulating and controlling language undermines free expression, and that certain powerful groups are using totalitarian methods.
