The Role of Identity and Language. How do the two constructs play together?

An explorative empirical Study

Term Paper (Advanced seminar) , 2016 , 35 Pages , Grade: 1,7

English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography

Considering the fact that, according to the Enthologue catalogue, there exist 7097 known living languages, but only 196 countries in the world, it is intelligible to presume that people do generally speak more than one language (Lewis et.al., 2016, Chrystal, 2007). Literature often discusses the phenomenon of differences in individuals’ behaviour in native and foreign tongues. It is believed that our childhood languages vibrate with greater emotional intensity than do those learned in more academic settings, which is reflected in our thoughts and actions (Sedivy, 2016). Do the languages we speak shape the way we see the world, the way we think, and the way we live our lives. This paper aims to answer this question and how and if language and identity correlate by investigating the relationship with the help of a theoretical approaches as well as the practical implementation through a survey.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Definitions and Background Knowledge
2.1 Identity
2.2 Language
2.2.1 Monolingualism, Bilingualism and Multilingualism

3. The Survey
3.1 Research Question
3.2 Hypotheses
3.3 Experiment methodology
3.3.1 Design
3.3.2 Recruitment
3.3.3 Participants
3.4 Analysis of results
3.4.1 Pearson Correlation
3.4.2 T-test
3.5 Evaluation of the results

4. Limitation & Discussion

5. Scientific and linguistic implications

6. Conclusion

7. References

8. Selbstständigkeitserlärung

9. Appendices
9.1 Literature Review
9.2 Tables
9.3 List of Figures
9.4 Coding key

• College: University of Kassel (Fremdsprachenlehr- und -lernforschung)
• Course: Language and Cultural Awareness
• Grade: 1,7
• Author: Helena Sabic (Author)
• Publication Year: 2016
• Pages: 35
• Catalog Number: V355633
• ISBN (eBook): 9783668415232
• ISBN (Book): 9783668415249
• Language: German
• Tags: Identity, Language, Bilingualism, Language Proficiency