language and social status[宝典].docVIP

姓名：张佳佳 学号：100201137 专业：英语 Language and Social Status One’s language can hardly be separated from its social status. I remember when I lived in Australia, one neighbor wanted to run for congress. Thus, he practiced pronunciation every morning so as to make his speech pleasing and decent. Indeed, language is the symbol of one’s social status, especially in multi-nation and multi-cultural society. Status, also known as knowledge structure, indicates the cultural background, knowledge degree and geographical position that you come from. Language can influence cognition of relevant culture. For instance, someone makes investigation on Chinese who speak two languages and finds that when they are asked questions about cultural conception, their responses approach more Chinese behavior than by English language. Interestingly, when Hong Kong people are asked questions about china culture or religion by Putonghua, their answers tend to be more western expression than by Guangdong language. In fact, most of them are not real bilingual but bilingual users for Chinese who learn foreign languages. The latter emphasizes on language and expression while the former concentrates on thinking and life habits. However, this process are not motionless but can be transformed. Therefore, what language learners learn is actually a kind of social relationship, which he thinks is formed by travelling through space-time. So, what he faces is not only linguistics, but more of multiple and transformed social status questions. The study also shows that a person’s speech style is not fixed, but alters along with the social environment and listeners. Generally speaking, personal speech has a tendency to convergence (go with the stream) but also has divergent tendency (show their character). For example, when I get back to Beijing, the Beijing cavity is naturally stronger. But when my British friends are in Australia, their British accent is more obvious as if expressing their status