Language and Identity

I believe English will never dominate the world. There are several reasons why it will never happen. One of the reasons is the strong relation between language and culture. A great number of countries have their own cultures even though globalization has been developing rapidly, and their cultures have hardly changed. The culture of English, which includes English as a language, has influenced many countries; however, these countries will never be dominated by English. Another reason is the connection between language and identity. I would like to discuss this idea.


There is a strong relationship between identity and language. One of the functions of language is to communicate with other people who are located in the same society. To communicate with others, it is better to have a common language. From this point of view, language indicates the society which people belong to and if we consider this theme widely, like the country or area where people speak the same language, the language may become one of the elements to identify the people. Furthermore, it is widely believed the language indicates a part of people’s identity. Considering these issues, language is strongly related to identity so that different languages may indicate different identification.

On the other hand, language is changing over time. For instance, a lot of English has been exported to Japan and some English words are used commonly in these days. For instance, lunch, restaurant, even “English” as words are spoken in common. This may be considered as a part of domination by the English language. Moreover, the more English words are used rather than other languages, such as Spanish, French and so on. Regarding this point of view, English has been dominating the world. Furthermore, if this process will continue, it may be possible that English will dominate the world in the future.

In conclusion, I think it may be possible to take over a part of lthe language and influence a lot of the other countries; however it is impossible that one language can dominate the others completely because the language, which the person speaks, is part of the identity.