Essay

The paragraph below comes from a 1979 essay by expatriate African American writer James Baldwin. Read the paragraph carefully and then write an essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies Baldwin's ideas about the importance of language as a "key to identity" and to social acceptance. Use specific examples from your observation, experience, or reading to develop your position.

"It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity. There have been, and are, times, and places, when to speak a certain language could be dangerous, even fatal. Or, one may speak the same language, but in such a way that one's antecedents are revealed, or (one hopes) hidden. This is true in France, and is absolutely true in England: The range (and reign) of accents on that damp little island make England coherent for the English and totally incomprehensible for everyone else. To open your mouth in England is (if I may use black English) to 'put you business on the street': You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future."

- James Baldwin

Language and the craft of rhetorically manipulating it are valuable assets to our historical and cultural society. The way one wields language and communication reveals one's character and upbringing, definitely a multi-faceted "key to identity."

James Baldwin concludes that in England it is especially prominent with the occurrence of regional dialects. When speaking in England, he writes, it is "to 'put your business in the street.'"

This is true in America, but nowhere near to the degree it is in Europe. Still, though, it is mere fact and common knowledge to say that when one presents and speaks eloquently, he is perceived as sophisticated and intelligent, whereas one who uses only mother tongue and simpleminded colloquialisms is perceived as unsophisticated and illiterate.

However, though there are those who criticize the linguistically challenged, the way one communicates should not be their only judge of character and legitimacy.

On the local news one evening, I watched a woman explain to the reporter that all of her dearest possessions had been stolen out of storage. Though her words were of informal vernacular and slangy colloquialism, her tormented tears were real and heartfelt, to the point that I said aloud, "That poor woman."

My stepmother, however, scoffed and proceeded to launch into an antagonistic and altogether crude view of the country's "hicks" and "hillbillies." I was affronted to think that if something so traumatic had happened to me, my horrors would be laughed at on the ridiculous account of judgmental miscreants.

Language is the window into one's mind, but should not be held comparable to one's soul.