Language As a Mask Sociocultural Identities Research Paper

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Language is one of the many masks individuals and communities wear in their self-presentation, in their conscientious demarcation between self and other. In her rhetorical analysis of post-Rodney King Los Angeles in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Anna Deavere Smith uses the medium of theater to aptly convey the theme of identity construction. One of the characters, Rudy Salas, Jr. uses the mask metaphor most meaningfully in the play, showing how people do not remain true to their authentic selves. Instead, they put on masks that announce their affiliation with a racial, ethnic, or subcultural group. “Well, they put on the mask—you ever notice that?—it’s a sort of mask, it’s uh...you know how they stand in your face with the ugly faces,” (Smith 5). Masks are more than just wearing gang colors or adopting a scowl that signifies power in the community. The concept of mask even goes beyond visible features of ethnicity or gender, and extends deeper into the subtleties of language. Moreover, a person can use language differently in different situations, as bilingual and multilingual people do as they fluidly float between worlds or when a person shifts from the formal discourse used in the workplace to the slang used among friends. Language becomes a mask when it is used to emphasize community or subculture affiliation, to show solidarity or to isolate outsiders, and to create multifaceted and malleable identities.

The use of language as a mask refers to the “sociolinguistic variables” that determine identity and implicate community cohesion (Bauman 1). For example, people in Los Angeles who identify with being Chicano would include language as one of the core features of their identity, with Chicano slang distinguishing the subculture from other Latin American or Hispanic groups in America. English and whiteness are both similar concepts, in that both are part of a dominant culture. Other languages are situated vis-a-vis English, just as other races are posited as “other” than white. Members of the Anglo community often forget the ways language serves to unite people along the domain of language, even when other variables like socioeconomic class, race, religion, and ethnicity are taken into account.

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Especially in societies in which language is actually an important means of dividing otherwise similar communities, such as in Canada or Belgium, the importance of language as a sociolinguistic variable becomes apparent.

When people can wear different linguistic “masks,” they can more easily move between different cultures and subcultures. For example, a person who is both black and Hispanic, and who…

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…a zombie mask to a masquerade ball. In fact, America can become a universal and inclusive costume party in which individuals can wear different linguistic masks in order to add character and color to the whole.

Language can be used to unite or divide. As English becomes the dominant language of the global economy, the question of who “owns” English also becomes part of the discourse on linguistic masks (Norton 1). The concept of “owning” English highlights the “nexus of language and identity,” in which people who are not white/European speak English and thus can include themselves as part of the Anglo dominant culture without being white or European (Bauman 1). Just as whiteness is sometimes presumed to “own” the dominant culture, with all other groups as being “other,” English is sometimes presented as being the default international language to which all other tongues are secondary. The metaphor of masks shows how people already use language differently in different scenarios regardless of ethnicity or culture, such as the different ways of speaking to elders versus children. Building on this use of linguistic masks, it is foreseeable that people can embrace transnational and transcultural identities, having a collection of linguistic masks that they can share with others in the global community.….....

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