Blog 4 Refusing to Speak a Language

Psychology Today- Refusing to Speak a Language

This is an article that I found on Psychology Today that talks about how bilinguals choose to speak a specific language depending on their situation and their environment. 

I picked this article because I have many friends who are bilingual and who constantly choose to not speak their foreign language around me, at school or even in their homes. Language speakers are constantly reminded that they are different when they are put in a setting that doesn't fit their language and those who can switch to the language that is most common to their environment do so the majority of the time. 

What I find most interesting about this article is that peer pressure is the main reason for this language switching. Children will refuse to speak their first language and speak English instead because they don't want their friends to think different of them. No one wants to be separated from the group. 

There is also the fact that sometimes we don't need to use a language anymore so it becomes dormant. Especially if it is a language seen as a minority or "enemy" as explained in the article through examples such as Jewish people who spoke German during WWII, and other examples.

This makes me think of the movie Dances with Wolves and how Stands With Fist In The Air actually forgets how to speak English because it is scary and foreign to her after spending most of her life living with the native Americans (if you haven't seen that movie definitely take time to watch it. It has a lot of language related topics in it, and Kevin Costner is amazing). This fits the quotation from the article, "Strong negative attitudes towards a minority language will also lead speakers of that language to refuse to speak it in public."

I agree that this is a common attitude that people exhibit when they want to conform to their environment. I've seen it happen with lot's of friends. I think that this could possibly be instinctive for survival but we don't really see it as such today. 

I do want to learn more about this topic because I think that it's so important that people should be comfortable being who they are, and I feel like the language of a person is something that is especially important to someone's identity in the sense that it's part of their culture and their upbringing. I love language, especially languages I don't know because they are so beautiful. When I hear a friend talking to a family member on the phone in Spanish, or Arabic, or Romanian I can't help but listen with a smile on my face. 

This topic effects the world because every country in the world has foreign language speakers and culture clashes are unfortunately common. Everyone needs to see that language is beautiful and that it shouldn't be something that separates groups of people but rather is a fun topic to discuss. We need to see it as an opportunity for more communication and understanding, rather than the one thing that defines someone and makes them unwelcome in a group.

I hope you guys like the article, I sure did.