US American suppression of language and identity with the focus on Hispanics and African American Vernacular English

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, printed single-sided, grade: 1,7, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Linguistic Schools: Theories & Methodologies of Modern Linguistics, language: English, abstract: According to the Oxford English Dictionary language is a system of communication in speech and writing that is used by people of a particular country and identities are the characteristics, feelings or beliefs that distinguish people from others. Both terms are directly connected because humans use speech as a tool to express their identity. It is the mother tongue which signals the origin of a person but the way people talk on the lexical-, grammatical- or phonological level gives a listener an idea of a speaker s sex, social class, religion, educational level, attitude, mood etc.. A strong impact on the personal identity has the social environment and the culture because people stick to norms, standards, beliefs and values which are prescribed by society. On the one hand we are aware of ourselves and we know who we are but on the other hand the perception of other people who identify us is important and that is different from person to person...