Launguage in America

Language in America

Glenda Parra

David Carson

Effective Essay Writing

08 March 2009

Language in America

What is language? Language is our form of expression and communication. Where did it come from? Many people believe that the English language that is similar to today’s was developed about some 500,000 years ago. We have made many changes to the original language but have maintained some of the original characteristics. Our language is one that is flexible and adapts well to whatever our society is evolving to and will continue to do so long after you and I are gone.

Language is defined in the Merriam- Webster Dictionary as words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community. Language as we know it came into being about five hundred-thousand years ago. The English language evolved from an Indo European Family of languages. Because of these origins it is related to most languages that are spoken in Europe and western Asia. We are able to communicate with them more easily because of this. Our language has had many changes in the thousands of years since its meek beginning so long ago.

What is the relation between language and society? Language is obviously a social

Phenomenon: its central function is interpersonal communication. Thus, one might expect

language to be sensitive to social structure. And indeed, the results of decades of sociolinguistic

research have demonstrated that many aspects of linguistic variation and change are dependent

on social structure. Yet much of the sociolinguistic research informing theories of variation and

change has been done on modern, industrial state societies, and moreover on the urban segments

of those societies. How generalizable are those theories to non-urban and preindustrial societies?

Conversely, many anthropological linguists have done studies on social and linguistic

relationships in specific non-urban and preindustrial societies. However, one...