Language Variation And Social Identity Establishment

A linguistic viewpoint which is against the dialectics has considered society the determinative part in the relationship between language and society. And to certify the deterninative function of language over society, the author argued the identiy establishing function by taking the example of"Wenge"English, which means the English taught at colleges during the cultural revolution.With its background of the cultural revolution, the"Wenge"English was created by the college teachers in the aim of rescuing their falling identity and fate. Right after the founding of PRC, the identity of college teachers was to a certain extent high in the China soceity, while after the brokeout of the cultural revolution it fell abruptly. Due to the inner consentment of Chairman Mao towards the intellectuals, and together with the born discrimination in their mind, college English teachers were violently attacked and persecuted, and their major job, the English teaching, helped the persecution.In order to get recognized by the society and rejoin the revolution, the college English teachers had to give in to the political climax and try to seek ways to avoid the fatal shadow. By the immitation of the chinese language spoken during the cultural revolution, a brand new style of English---"Wenge"English was established, whose aim was to show to the around that the college teachers were becoming revolutionary."Wenge"English had a two-part strategy: political content and popular level. The former refers to a political reflection of vocabulary, syntax, intonation and text; while the latter means to lower the grammatical level so as to get accepted by the maximum popularity. According to this strategy, the establishment of their identity got undergoing with respect to the construction of political image, class stand and mental conciousness.The construction of political image contains the translation of many political chinese words and sentences into English, by speaking this style of English, they presented themselves to the society a image of being very political, their image was therefore established. Their class stand was established by employing words and sentences mainly refer to those concerning workers, peasants, soldiers, whom were considered belong to the most revolutionary class. A mental conciousness was established by a course of political texts selection and edition.The above-mentioned establishment certified that language does hold a function of constructing social identity, the conclution fulfills the dialectical analysis of the relationship between language and society, besides, the ways of the application of the function are also presented. The first way to apply this function is called language democracy, which means the allowance of various language to share the right of its social existence; the other one is called language technology,which means the language adjustment in interpersonal or intersocial communications.Social identity construction has supplemented the study of language variation in Linguistics and the theory of social construction in sociology. It not only represented the situation of the college English teachers in the cultural revolution, but also explored their way of inventing the"Wenge"English. The case study has exemplified the function of social identity construction, and the corresponding application will make a contribution to the development of both linguistic and social research.