Language and Identity in Immigrant Literature

Abstract

This essay examines the role of language in the formation of immigrant identity and in the negotiation of social belonging in immigrant literature. The essay argues that language becomes a means of communicating individual experiences of displacement, loss in the host community, desire for return, or denial of a single cultural identity, a negotiation for joining two or more cultures and languages. Language becomes a way to communicate and negotiate the expression of an ambivalent sense of identity that is characterized by a feeling of being different in relation to both the native community in the host country of choice and the community of origin. Better understanding the relationship between immigrant language and identity can help to revise conceptions of language and identity that have determined linguistic and language use policies that have marginalized many immigrant languages. It can provide new paths for further research and analysis both within and outside the Italian and postcolonial context. Though language can be a living connection to the country and culture of origin for the first generation and provide a metaphor in creative writing of the immigrant experience, for the second generation in immigrant communities, or immigrants who moved as children, the native language can often create a barrier, an obstacle that stops them from effectively integrating into the new environment. The essay will take an approach that is not strictly sociolinguistic to illustrate the close relationship between language and identity, which cultural and social linguistics can better reflect.

Keywords: Language, Identity, Immigrant, Literature, Displacement, Cultural negotiation, Belonging