The power of language free essay sample

Although Susanne Langer did a study on humans and animals to show signs vs. symbols in understanding language, Helen Keller and Malcolm X took different paths on discovering the power of language. Langer brings up how there is a difference between symbols and signs, which most people consider them one in the same. For Keller she was deaf and blind from the age of 19 months, where she had difficulty learning how to communicate and understand language. In Malcolm X’s case, he was a street hustler who didn’t get proper education and was frustrated when he couldn’t get his point across through his letters he wrote. In â€Å"Language and thought† it was said, â€Å"A sign is anything that announces the existence or the imminence of some event, the presence of a thing or a person, or a change in the state of affairs† (Langer, Pg. 28). Where both humans and animals use signs all the time. To begin with, the Industrial Revolution was born in Britain and the world’s most important financial center was London, which made English the language of business (Fox, 2000). Later, after economic globalization, we see English everywhere. It is not only the language of the business but also the politics, computers and the Internet. Moreover, English’s linguistic impact also plays a role in the entertainment industry. Most popular songs, movies, shows, best seller books are in English. Hence, I find Breton’s criticisms about English’s importance after economic globalization both valid and realistic. I definitely agree with the writer that cultural imperialism is much more subtle and visible than economic imperialism. Without a doubt, culture is the most important thing which belongs to a nation. That is the reason why most of the major powers apply linguistic strategies in Third World countries. To illustrate, Robert Phillipson notes on his book, Language Imperialism, that the arguments which says English is the richest and most proper language to express yourself is a part of language imperialism(1992). Moreover, almost every major power launched language education programs in order to apply linguistic imperialism. For example, many great powers establish institutes to protect and spread their languages such as Institute of German Language and Spanish Language Institute. Thus, I believe that the easiest way to destroy a culture is to destroy their languages so, it is obvious that although it is less tangible and visible than economic imperialism, cultural imperialism it the most  powerful way to upgrade a language. The writer is wrong in making the contention that teaching another language is the best way to kill off a language. The writer states that minor languages will die out because instead of these minor languages, about 100 national languages are taught in schools (Breton, 2000). In my opinion, teaching another language does not aim to kill off a language; however, there are some reasons why many minor languages had disappeared in progress of time. The first reason is related to the governments’ language policies about minorities. For example in Canada, First Nations children were being punished in residential schools for speaking indigenous language and still they have been forced to speak in a dominant language which are English or French(Nicholas, 2011). Another reason is, in the past, wars, natural disaster and shortage of food caused immigrations. When people settled down in these new places, in order to communicate easily with local people they started to speak in their lang uage. After a while, they gave up speaking in their own languages at home or in their daily life, thus the number of people who can speak and write their languages has decreased day by day. Therefore, when these two ideas are taken into consideration, I do not agree with Breton’s idea that the best way to kill off a language is to teach another one. All in all, there are viewpoints that I both agree and disagree with in the text â€Å"Can English be dethroned?† I think that economic globalization has a great power in English. Technological developments in English-spoken countries caused widely spread use of English. Also because of the obvious relationship between culture and language, it is understandable that why almost all of the great powers use language as a tool of cultural imperialism as the writer states. However, learning a new language help you to meet new cultures and helps you in both academic success and your life. As long as you don’t become a person who you are not, learning new languages will improve your perspective. Moreover, when we consider the importance of English that I talked about, we can easily say that it is hard to dethrone English.