The Changing Nature of Language

For me, my earliest understanding of languages is that people from different countries speak different languages, such as Chinese, English, French, Japanese, etc. Later, when I thought about it, I think of language as a tool of communication, and at the same time, language can have different forms and different people can use different languages.

It is now my understanding that language, in addition to its role as a communication tool, is of a changing nature. Language changes depending on the differences in understanding between the two sides of a conversation, and it also changes depending on the circumstances in which people live.

In the process of expression, Language often does not have the effect we want. There will always be a difference between what we wish to express and what others understand. As Deborah Tannen put it in her book Conversation Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends , "as demonstrated by the work of John Gumperz (1982b) and others, many of the elements of how people talk, which seem self-evidently appropriate to the speaker, in fact differ from one person to the next and from one group to the next". This difference comes mainly from the impressions that people and their language leave on other people. Impressions are created by both sides of communication, so language is also influenced by both sides. At the Thanksgiving dinner Tennan attended, people from New York State may have been speaking in their familiar ways, but they left the impression that "they were dominating the conversation"; Tennan's friend spent most of the time thinking while talking to her, while at his workplace, he spent most of the time talking instead.

In addition, when people leave their homes, the language changes. Language is born when we first want to express something, and the sound of a baby crying in its mother's arms can be considered language, but only a baby can understand it. As we grow, our language continues to be influenced by our families and those around us. The language we learn from our mother eventually becomes our mother tongue, and the language we communicate with those around us becomes our accent. Amy Tan says in her article, Mother Tongue, that she finds her mother's language vivid and clear in a way that others often don't. However, Tan also mentioned that she did not do well in English when she was young because of her mother tongue. In a similar way, her mother tongue almost limited the possibilities in her life, and she expresses an Whorfianism idea here. Our mother tongue is very different from the language in which we talk to others, and this difference will eventually be reflected in the conversation style mentioned above. This difference, as Tan mentioned, also has the potential to subconsciously affect a person's life. That is how our family and our living environment shape our language and Life.

In short, what I have learned about language is that it has an ever-changing nature. Understanding this feature of language can help us better understand what others are trying to express, and thus improve our understanding of each other.

References

?Tannen. (2005). Conversational style analyzing talk among friends (New ed.). Oxford University Press.

Tan, A. (1990). Mother Tongue. The Threepenny Review, 43, 7–8. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4383908