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Language Hegemony

In: English and Literature

Submitted By titusatai
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Race and Language Race is the primary division of humanity having several physical appearances, or it’s a group of people who are similar in some tangible ways and perceive themselves as persons of the same group. In the United States, race has been abused to see other people as inferior just because they belong to a different race. The blacks have been the most affected people as they have been recognized by the N-word nigger which is very offensive. However, rather than just physical appearance, race is a performance performed in many ways. According to Christopher Brown, “race shapes our experiences and assists in the way that we assign meaning to others”. This is encrypted in our day to day interactions with people from other races and not in our DNA. To avoid conflict due to the race discrimination, Brown advises people to be passive aggressive to avoid conflicts. This is a behavior that makes one look innocent and unhurt even when the other person has provoked them. For example, Brown once helped a professor open a jammed door after the professor had jokingly prodded him because of his race. He pretended that he wasn’t hurt by what the professor had just said. Brown says that we can perform our race through language by responding with reason that will gently rub away the exterior of its face because we always expect it due to our races. As a black, there is nothing you can change. Language is a source of (Re) constituting authority because the way one is heard, determines the way that one is perceived by others. The black people’s accent is inescapable, and there is little that the blacks can do to shun from it. In the United States, the hegemony of English language has had some adverse effects on the marginalized groups of people. It has legitimized the presence of the majority people whereas marginalizing the minority. This lead to the forced assimilation of persons. The forced assimilation lead to civilization and Christianize of the native Americans. Others were relocated to distant boarding schools with strict English-only rules destroying barbarous dialect of the minority. The sign language among the deaf was also prohibited in the USA till the 1960s.This gave English an advantage over the other languages for long. This was a linguistic landscape. The United States also banned foreign language by law. All the foreign languages were prohibited for use in the public. Not even signs are written in foreign language. Beach access was limited to residents and guests only an evidence of linguistic hierarchy. In conclusion, the world is a place of multilingual diversity and therefore one language should not be seen as superior to the others. The world also has a lot of races, and it will be good to respect other races for everyone to live in harmony.

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